Blue Bugle: Mobile, Desktop & Web Technologies

Adobe’s PDF is a highly popular document format. Portability and printability are two of the most important aspects of PDF that make it popular. In this short article, let me explain to you how you can convert a Word document, created with Microsoft Word (any version) into the PDF format. Step 1: First of all, download and install an application called  SodaPDF . This is the best PDF creation software in the world. It can not only convert documents from Word format, but also from almost three hundred other formats, including HTML, PPT, RTF, TXT, etc. Step 2: Open SodaPDF application, and click on the top, ‘Create and Convert’ tab. Here you have several different options to create PDF documents from. The option you need to select here is ‘Create from Any File’. Step 3: Browse to the document that you want to convert. You can browse any of those three hundred formats, which include the Word documents as well. All different versions of MS Word are supported by SodaPDF, and...

There are a few instances when factory-resetting your smartphone is a necessity. Virus attacks, compromised data, device getting extremely slow, etc., are some of the reasons. It goes without saying that factory-resetting should be done only if there is no other go. The reason is that it will completely erase any information you have on your device—your contacts, files, apps, music, videos, settings, etc. In effect, it simply takes the mobile back to how it was when you bought it. If you are in dire need to reset your device, simply follow these guidelines. 1. If Your Phone Is Android You can simply follow the menu option, Settings->Personal->Backup & Reset . Over there, you will find the Factory Reset option at the bottom. This is for Android versions 4.0 and onwards (Ice Cream Sandwich and later). The devices supporting this include Nexus 4, Samsung Galaxy S3, Nexus 7, etc. If you are still using an older version of Android, such as Gingerbread 2.3 or 3.0 Honeycomb,...

750,000 is a large number. It is not only the approximate land area of Mexico in sq mi., but also the total number of available Android apps. It is also the tagline of our product of the day—BlueStacks. BlueStacks is a unique application that can be downloaded to your Windows PC or your Apple Mac computer in order to run any of these 750,000 Android apps. Pretty cool, huh? Yesterday, BlueStacks released its application to work with MS Surface Pro, which means the application has support for Windows 8 as well. This means, Android cannot boast having such a vast app ecosystem anymore. It is a pretty big offering indeed. Being able to run any of those 750,000 Android apps is a really nice thing. So, we decided to give it a shot and see how BlueStacks works on a Windows computer. 1. Installing BlueStacks You can download BlueStacks from here , depending on the operating system used. After getting the version, just install the file on your computer. I have installed BlueStacks on ...

Have you been looking for battery saving tips on iPhone 5 quite a lot? Yes, your iPhone has a mediocre battery that gets you going for a day of usage, and if you are lucky, a little more than that. You may really have to work less and keep it locked more often in order to keep the charge. Have you ever wondered how iPhone 5’s battery which is 1440 mAh delivering 3.8 Volts of power can perform better than iPhone 4S’s 1430 mAh battery giving 3.7 Volts? [Learn about battery parameters ]The answer to the question is in the Apple chip used on iPhone 5 as well as the software on the smartphone—iOS 6. In terms of high-tech hardware and software engineering, nobody comes close to Apple. Remember the first iPhone keynote by Steve Jobs, in which he mentioned a quote by a famous computer programmer, Alan Curtis Kay, People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. Apple has always followed this strategy of making their own hardware and software, so that they get ...

We have already covered how you can display full desktop website on Android browsers . If you are holding an iPhone, here’s the how-to. On iPhone, it is rather difficult to emulate the user agent string as we did in Android. You actually need to jailbreak the phone in order to install an incompatible app called User Agent Faker. There are however risks to jailbreaking . Otherwise, you need to install a separate browser within iPhone that gives you the option to change the user agent and display the desktop version of the website. One of the browsers available that does this is Google Chrome. Chrome is available on Apple App store . It gives you the menu option of requesting a desktop version of the mobile site you are browsing. As an alternative, you can go with one of the paid browsers on App store, such as the Atomic browser  or iCabMobile , both of which retail at the app store for $1.99. They have several other features as well, to justify the price tag. They both le...

When you open a website on your PC, you generally get the full website with all the images, videos, sidebar widgets, and others. On the other hand, on your smartphone, most probably you see only the post titles and excerpts, just the basic text content. This is probably so even if you are using a sophisticated smartphone like iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S3. You may want to see the full website on your smartphone simply because it can show the full website, sometimes at a faster speed than your PC. Here’s how you do it on your Android phone. Hack on Webkit Most of the Android phones use the built-in browser which is based on WebKit engine. If your smartphone has the default WebKit Androiid browser, here’s how you can display the full website on it. 1. Go to the browser address bar and type ‘about:debug’ and tap ‘Go’. 2. You will see various debug settings over here, and the one we need to display desktop websites on mobile browser is the user agent string (UAString). 3. Tap ...

How inferior are those webcams that come with most computers? Most of them are mediocre 2 MP or less than that, without any good picture quality. Don’t you feel you are missing something while your smartphone with that amazing camera is sitting right there? Well, you are! You can turn that wonderful smartphone into a webcam and wirelessly connect it with your computer so that you can use it for taking pictures and videos or high-quality video-chatting. Here’s how. Part I: If Your Smartphone Is Android Android phones  are pretty popular, and you are probably holding one. If so, this section of the article is for you. First of all, you need to install an app from the Google Play store. There are a few apps that can turn your phone into webcam. Some of them are IP Webcam , DroidCamX Pro , WO Webcam Lite . We will see how it is done with IP Webcam, which is a free offering. Install the app and open it up for the initial setup. Some settings are given by default, and you can chan...