Never stop learning! - Tech Courses Gone Free! Make the most of your time at home

     We are living in extraordinary times, locked down and trying to work from home. This could also be a good time to level up your tech skills and learn something new that could help in the future when things get normal again.

To help you make the most of your time, I have curated a list of premium video courses that have gone completely free temporarily during the Coronavirus crisis.

1. Pluralsight is among the world’s best online training platforms producing video screen casts around software development, machine learning and new technologies that are in demand. They have made their entire library free for the month of April and you don’t even need a credit card to register an account. Learn more.

Recommended: Python for Data Analysts

2. I am a fan of Udemy and some of the programming skills I have learned in through recent years are through Udemy. The courses are inexpensive and the teachers that have high-rating are actually very good. Udemy just made over 180 top courses for beginners free and these aren’t just limited to tech. Learn more.

Recommended: Amazon Web Services - Zero to Hero

3. Coursera helps you build tech skills with courses developed in collaboration universities and tech companies like Google and Amazon. They have made a selection of online courses free for the next few months and you can even get a certificate after course completion. Learn more.

Recommended: Machine Learning for Business Professionals

4. Udacity offers paid nanodegree programs in collaboration with Google for web and app developers. The programs are oriented towards beginners as well as advanced users. They have made all premium nanodegree programs free for one month. Learn more.

Recommended: Become an Android Developer

5. Google-owned Qwiklabs platform offers self-paced exercises for learning everything about Google Cloud, GSuite and Amazon Web Services. Unlike other video courses where you only watch screencasts , Qwiklabs offers you practical hands-on training so you can actually log into the console and follow along. Free for one month. Learn more

5. More Learning Resources for Stay@Home Workers

Here’s a list of other companies that are offering freebies and discounts amid the Coronavirus crisis:

• This Google Sheet curates a list of companies that are offering free or discounted products during the COVID-19 crisis.
• MOZ Academy offers free SEO training using the code wegotthis - valid until May 31.
• Nikon School is now streaming all their online photography courses for free for the entire month of April.
• Zoho offers a suite of productivity tools for remote workers and they are completely free for the next few months.
• LinkedIn Learning is offering a video course on remote working and it covers topics like time management to managing virtual teams.
• This Reddit offers a list of things you can do while you are at home.
• Audible is offering audiobooks that you can listen in the browser without having to sign-in with your Amazon account.
• Automate the Boring Stuff, the best selling video course on learning Python is free until April 7.
• Scribd has offered their entire catalog of ebooks, magazines and audiobooks free for 30 days using this special link.
• YouTube has launched a micro portal - Learn@Home - that curates the best YouTube channels for learning science and maths.

Never stop learning!

Thanks to : - labnol.org

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Aarogya Setu - How India's COVID-19 Proximity Alerts Work?

The Government of India has developed a mobile tracker app - Aarogya Setu - as part of their efforts to contain the spread of Corona virus in this country of 1.3 billion people. The app is available for both iPhone and Android phones.

The Aarogya Setu app has already gone viral in India with more than a million downloads in a single day.

The app has three parts:

1. It contains a chat bot that guides you through a self-assessment test if you exhibit any COVID-19 symptoms.
2. The app provides quick access to emergency phone numbers of health centers that are dealing with COVID-19 patients.
3. The app will automatically alert you if you ever come near (or have crossed paths earlier) to a person who has tested COVID-19 positive.

Proximity Alerts for COVID-19 - How the app works?

The proximity alert feature in Aarogya Setu is the reason why people are so interested in this app but how does this work?

This morning, a person who returned from Dubai about two weeks ago, tested positive for Coronavirus and the authorities have taken him to the hospital. Their residence is less than a mile from our home and I was expecting some sort of alert in the tracker app but none so far.

So I dug a bit deeper into how the app works and here’s what I found:

When a user installs the app, it uses Bluetooth to detect any nearby phones that could also be running the Aaryogya Setu app. While the actual algorithm is a secret, the app likely keeps a record of all devices that have ever been near to you. If the owner of any of these nearby phones is later found to be infected, the app will alert you.

Thus more and more people have to install the app, with Bluetooth and location turned on, for the proximity alerts to really work.

I am not aware of the internal working of the app but I think it would have been even more effective if it made use of GPS data as well. Let me explain.

When the app is continuously scanning the location of its users, it has a fairly accurate overview of who has been where in recent days. If a COVID-19 positive case is detected, his path can be traced and others users who have crossed through those geographic regions can be alerted though the app.

Courtesy :- www.labnol.org

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How to Embed Facebook Message Buttons in your Website?

       Email has always been the preferred mode for reaching out to people on the Internet. Websites would put their email addresses on web pages and made them clickable hyperlinks using the mailto protocol. Things have changed and while email is still considered important, the new generation is known to prefer instant texting apps like Facebook Messenger over email. For them, writing an email is as boring as creating a résumé.

This step-by-step guide explains the various techniques that you can use to easily embed the Facebook Messenger button in your website. When someone clicks the Message Me button, it will directly launch the Facebook Messenger app on their mobile phone or the messenger.com website if they are on the desktop. You can choose to receive messages in your Facebook profile or your Facebook page, if you have one.

A: Simple Facebook Messenger Link

The default Facebook Messenger button is rendered using JavaScript but you can also write them in pure HTML without requiring JavaScript. The advantage is that these buttons (see demo) would show up even if the user has enabled ad blockers and second, you can embed message links inside email newsletters.

All you have to do is replace “XYZ” in the snippet below with your Facebook vanity username. If you don’t have a username yet, you can use your numerical Facebook profile ID instead. The link may be customized with CSS to resemble a button as seen in this live demo.

 <a href="https://m.me/XYZ">
    Message us on Facebook
 </a>

Tip: If you are not seeing messages sent to your Facebook profile, it is because Facebook automatically hides messages from people that are not in your contacts / friends list. Go to facebook.com/messages, click the “More” dropdown and choose “Filtered” to see all messages that are not in your main inbox.

B: Facebook Messenger Button

This is the default Facebook Messenger button (see live demo) rendered with JavaScript. Unlike the previous option that allows messaging to personal profile as well, this button is only available to Facebook Page owners for them to receive messages from other Facebook users.
To get started, copy-paste the following snippet in your blog template but remember to replace “XYZ” with the numeric ID of you Facebook Page. You can set the color as white for a blue text on white background button.

<script>      
      window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
        FB.init({
          appId      : '95100348886',
          xfbml      : true,
          version    : 'v2.6'
        });
      };
 
      (function(d, s, id){
        var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
        if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}
        js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
        js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js";
        fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
      }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));      
    </script>
 
    <div class="fb-messengermessageus" 
         messenger_app_id="95100348886" 
         page_id="XYZ" 
         color="blue"
         size="large">
    </div>

Tip: If you are unable to use the Facebook Messenger button, it is likely that your Facebook Page is configured to not receive messages. Go to your Facebook Page settings, choose General, Messages and turn on the option that says “Allow people to contact my Page privately by showing the Message button”.

C: Facebook Messenger Box

You have seen the Facebook Like box embedded in websites but did you know that the same box can also include an inline form allowing any Facebook user to contact you without even leaving your webpage. Here’s a live demo.
In this case you need to replace “XYZ” in the snippet below with the vanity username or ID of your Facebook Page. Anyone who is logged into Facebook can message you from your website itself, similar to regular contact us forms.

<script>
      window.fbAsyncInit = function() {
        FB.init({
          appId      : '95100348886',
          xfbml      : true,
          version    : 'v2.6'
        });
      };
 
      (function(d, s, id){
        var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
        if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}
        js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
        js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js";
        fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
      }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
    </script>
 
    <div class="fb-page" 
         data-href="https://www.facebook.com/XZY/" 
         data-tabs="messages" 
         data-width="400" 
         data-height="300" 
         data-small-header="true">
      <div class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore">
        <blockquote></blockquote>
      </div>
    </div>





You should also check the Facebook Page Plugin to learn about all the other configuration options that can be easily set using the data attributes.




Courtesy : www.labnol.org

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How To Archive Web Pages, Permanently?

          Web pages change or may even disappear with time. Thus if you would like to preserve a web page forever, you should either need to download that page to your computer (and put it on Dropbox) or you could use a web archiving service that will safely store a copy of that page on their own servers, permanently.

There are quite a few ways to save web pages permanently and your choice of the tool will depend on the kind of web content that you are trying to archive.

Archive Web Pages, Permanently

If you are essentially interested in the saving text-only content, like news articles, Pocket and Instapaper are recommended choices. You can save pages via email, browser extensions, bookmarklets or through apps. These services extract the text content from a public web page and make it available on all your devices. However, there’s no option to download the saved articles, you can only read them on Pocket website or their mobile apps.

Evernote and OneNote are impressing tools for archiving web content in your own private notebooks. They provide web clippers (or extensions) that make it easy for you to save complete web pages – from tutorials to recipes to your online transactions receipts – with a click. The clipped web pages can be accessed from any device, the original layout is retained (mostly) and everything is searchable – these services can even perform OCR to find the text inside photographs. Evernote also lets your export these saved pages as HTML files that you can upload elsewhere.

If you prefer something quick and simple that works everywhere but doesn’t require extensions, you can consider saving web pages as PDF files. Google Chrome has a built-in PDF writer or you can use Google Cloud Print. It add a new “Save to Google Drive” virtual printer and the next time you print a page on our desktop or mobile through Cloud Print, it will save a PDF copy of the page directly in your Drive. This is however not the best choice for saving pages with complex formatting.

When the layout is important, your best bet is to use a screen capture tool. You’re obviously spoilt for choices here but I’d recommend the official Chrome add-onfrom Google – it will not only capture full-length screenshots of web page but it will also upload the image to your Google Drive in the same step. The add-on can also save web pages in the web archive (MHT) format that is natively supported in both IE and Firefox.

The Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive is a perfect place for finding previous versions of web pages but the same tool can be used to save any web page on-demand as well. Go to archive.org/web and enter the URL of any public web pages in the input box. The archiver will download a full copy of the page, including all the images and assets, on their server. It will make a permanent archive of the page that looks exactly like the original and will stay even if the original page goes offline.

Internet Archive doesn’t offer an option to download saved pages but Archive.Is can be a good alternative. It is very similar to archive.org in the sense that you enter the page URL and it will make an exact snapshot of the web page on their server. The page will be stored online forever but here you also have the option to download the saved page as a ZIP file. It too provides date based archives so you can have multiple snapshots of the same page for different days.

All popular web browsers provide an option to download a complete web page to your computer. It will download the HTML web page as well as the associated images, CSS and JavaScript to your computer so you can read it offline. You’ll however have to put effort in organizing these archives as the saved content may not be searchable through your desktop search programs.

eReader owners can use dotEPUB to download any web page as an ePUB or MOBI ebook, formats that are compatible with most readers. Amazon offers a Kindle add-on to help you save any web page in your Kindle device but, as with Pocket, these tools are primarily for archiving text based web content.

Most of the tools discussed above allow you to download a single page but if you wish to save a set of URLs in bulk, wget may be your savior. We also have a Google Script for downloading web pages to Drive automatically (like a cron job) but it will get the HTML content and nothing else.

Courtesy : labnol.org

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How to Remove Password from PDF Files with Google Chrome?

       

The bank sends me monthly credit card statements as password-protected PDF files mostly because they contain personal information. I archive these PDFs into Google Drive but, because these files are protected with a password, the text isn’t searchable inside Drive. Also, each PDF file has a different password so it’s impossible to remember them and takes just too much to find these PDFs later.

Removing Password from a PDF File

Since the Google Drive is already protected with 2 layers of security – password and 2-factor authentication – it should be OK if we remove the password protection from PDF files before uploading them to Drive.
Is there any software program available that can remove password protection from PDF files? One that doesn’t cost a dime and works on both Mac and Windows? Well the answer is yes and that too is already installed on your computer. It’s called Google Chrome.
Google Chrome has a built-in PDF reader* and a PDF writer and we can combine the two features to remove the password from any PDF document. Let’s see how:

1. Drag any password protected PDF file into your Google Chrome browser. If you can’t find one, use this sample PDF file – the open password is “labnol” without the quotes.
2. Google Chrome will now prompt you to enter the password of the file. Enter the password and hit Enter to open the file.
3. Now go to the File menu in Google Chrome and choose Print (or press Ctrl+P on Windows or Cmd+P on Mac). Choose the destination printer as “Save as PDF” and click the Save button.

Google Chrome will now save the PDF to your desktop but without the password protection. 

Remove PDF Passwords without Chrome

If you are not a Google Chrome user, download this free Windows utility called BeCyPDFMetaEdit to remove passwords from PDF files.

First launch the program and it will ask your for the location of the PDF file. Before you select and open the PDF, change the mode to “Complete Rewrite,” then switch to the Security tab and set the “Security System” to “No encryption.” Click the Save button and your PDF will no longer require a password to open.

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How to View YouTube Videos Offline on your Mobile?

             YouTube users in India rejoice. You can now download YouTube videos on your Android or iOS device using the official YouTube app itself and watch the videos later while you are offline or on a slow connection.

             It takes a few easy steps to download a video on the YouTube app. Open a video, tap the download button (see screenshot), choose the resolution for the downloaded video and it will begin to download on your device. There’s a new “Offline” section in the YouTube app where you can find a list of all videos that are currently in the download queue or available for offline watching.

The offline feature is available on the YouTube app for both Android and iPhone. 

         That said, there are certain obvious limitations. One, not every video available on the YouTube website is available for download. The offline mode is mostly disabled for music videos and movies.

      Also, the downloaded videos can only be watched inside the YouTube app. I did some digging on Android and it turns out that YouTube saves the videos into smaller chunks as .exo files, a format that is not supported in other media players.

There are however no restrictions around the number of videos that you can take offline with the YouTube app, you are only limited by the free storage available on your iPhone or Android phone.

Read Full Story..,

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How to Move Files between your Android and Desktop Gets Easier with AirDroid 3?

          The AirDroid app is probably the easiest way to manage your Android phone from your Mac or Windows PC. It lets you quickly transfer files between your phone and your computer, or from one Android phone to another, without requiring any USB cables.

The newest version of AirDroid – version 3.0 – is even better.

Earlier, if you had to transfer a file from the computer to your Android phone via AirDroid, you had to open a special web page in your web browser, authenticate the connection and only then were you allowed to download or upload files.

Now AirDroid has released dedicated clients (software program) for both Windows and Mac that mostly bypasses the need for a web browser. Once you have installed the AirDroid software on your computer, you can simply drag one or more files to the desktop app and the files are instantly transferred to your Android device. It just works.

The transfer happens extremely fast if your computer and your phone are connected to the same WiFi network. However, if one of your devices is not on LAN, you can still send your files via the cloud. The files stay in the cloud for a week before they are permanently deleted.

You can view your phone call logs and also reply to SMS messages from the computer. It is however not possible to initiate phone calls from the desktop. And certain old features, like the ability to capture remote screenshots and photographs using your phone’s camera, still require the web browser.

AirDroid app on Android sports a clean look though its not Material Design

AirDroid 3 is not available (see update) in the Google Play store yet but you can head over to beta.airdroid.com to download the Android app and the desktop clients that available for both Mac and Windows. You’ll need to sideload the apk files and that essentially means letting your Android phone to install apps outside the apps store.

Update: AirDroid 3 is now live.

AirDroid or PushBullet – Which is Better?

PushBullet is another popular alternative to AirDroid and offers similar features. With PushBullet, you can push notes and links from Chrome to your Android device with a right click, you can send files between various devices and it can mirror your Android notifications on the desktop.

However, the advantage with AirDroid is that it transfers files over WiFi (if available) while Push Bullet uploads the files to its own servers which is always slower than LAN transfer.

Both allow you to push text notes but while AirDroid is a Android only solution, PushBullet is available for both Android and iPhone. Also, Push Bullet offers a Chrome extension allowing you to send links and text from desktop to phone with a right-click. This is not available on AirDroid.

For now, I’ll prefer to have both apps on my phone.

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Courtesy: www.labnol.org

How to Easy Download APK File from Google Play?

     

                 Android apps are packaged as APK files. You can use any File Manager app to copy these files from the computer to your Android device and then touch the .apk file to install, or sideload, the corresponding app on your device.
There are various reasons why you may want to download the APK installer of an Android app from the Google Play store:

1. Google Play Store says that a particular app or game is incompatible with your Android device though you know that the app would work just file.
2. Sometime an Android app may be not be available for download in the Google Play store of your region or country.
3. An app is listed on the Google Play store but you want to install that app on another Android device, like the Amazon Kindle tablet, that doesn’t have the Play Store.

How to Download APK Files from Google Play Store

Evozi, an Android app developer, offers a one-click online APK download app that lets you download the APK installed of any Android app that’s listed on the Google Play store. The downloader app can be accessed at apps.evozi.com.
To get started, enter the web URL of any app listed on the Google Play store and click the “Generated Download Link” button. The APK download app will fetch the APK file from the Google Play store and will host it on its own servers from where you downlaod the file.
Since the APK files are directly fetched from the Google Play Store, it’s unlikely that the Android App will be infected with any malware. Also, to prevent app privacy, the APK downloader only lets you download free apps and games from the Google Play store.

Thanks to www.labnol.org

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How to Move a Blog from Blogger to WordPress?

                
Your blog (abc.blogspot.com) is hosted on Blogger but you would now like to move your blog from Blogger to WordPress (self-hosted) with a personal domain name like abc.com. What is the easiest way to switch from Blogger to WordPress without losing search traffic and your existing subscribers?

WordPress provides an easy one-click option for importing blog posts and reader comments from Blogger into a new WordPress blog but there’s more to migration than just transferring content. For instance:

• Some of your articles on the old blogspot blog could be ranking very high in search engines for certain keywords but once you move these articles to a new WordPress blog, you will lose the organic search traffic since the permalinks (or URLs) of your blog posts will change.
• People often land on your blog through search engines, browser bookmarks and via other web sites that have linked to your blog pages. If you migrate to WordPress, Blogger would not automatically redirect the incoming traffic to your new website.
• When you switch from Blogger to WordPress, existing readers who are subscribed to your Blogger RSS Feed may be lost forever if they don’t manually subscribe to your new WordPress feed address (and most won’t).

The Importer tool available inside WordPress will only transfer content from Blogger to WordPress but if would also like to take care of each and every issue listed above, follow this step-by-step tutorial. It takes less than 5 minutes to complete and the method will also help transfer that Google Juice from the old blogspot.com address to your new WordPress blog.

How to Move a Blog from Blogger to WordPress

Important: Before you start the migration, it may be a good idea to backup your Blogger blog including the XML template, blog posts and comments just to be on the safe side.

1. Register a new web domain, buy hosting and install WordPress on your new domain.
2. Open your WordPress Admin Dashboard and under Tools -> Import, select the Blogger option. Authorize WordPress to access your Blogger Account, select your blogspot.com blog and within minutes, all your Blogger blog posts and comments will be available on the new WordPress site.
3. Open the WordPress themes editor under Appearance -> Editor and open the functions.php file for editing. Most WordPress themes include a functions.php file or you can upload it manually into your WordPress themes folder through cPanel or FTP. Copy-paste the following snippet of code inside your functions.php file and click the “Update File” button to save your changes.

<?php
 
function labnol_blogger_query_vars_filter( $vars ) {
  $vars[] = "blogger";
  return $vars;
}
 
add_filter('query_vars', 'labnol_blogger_query_vars_filter');
 
function labnol_blogger_template_redirect() {
  global $wp_query;
  $blogger = $wp_query->query_vars['blogger'];
  if ( isset ( $blogger ) ) {
    wp_redirect( labnol_get_wordpress_url ( $blogger ) , 301 );
    exit;
  }
}
 
add_action( 'template_redirect', 'labnol_blogger_template_redirect' );
 
function labnol_get_wordpress_url($blogger_slug) {
  global $wpdb;
  if ( preg_match('@^(?:https?://)?([^/]+)(.*)@i', $blogger_slug, $matches) ) {
    $q = "SELECT guid FROM $wpdb->posts LEFT JOIN $wpdb->postmeta
          ON ($wpdb->posts.ID = $wpdb->postmeta.post_id)
          WHERE $wpdb->postmeta.meta_key='blogger_permalink'
          AND $wpdb->postmeta.meta_value='$matches[2]'";
    $wp_url = $wpdb->get_var($q);
  }
  return $wp_url ? $wp_url : home_url();
}
 
?>

4. Open your Blogger Dashboard and choose Templates. Scroll down the templates page and choose the “Revert to Classic Templates” option to switch from the XML-based Blogger templates to Tag based templates.
5. Copy-paste the following snippet into your Blogger template editor but before you do that, replace all occurrences of labnol.org with your WordPress site URL. For instance, if your WordPress site is located at example.com, replace labnol.org with example.com and paste the modified snippet in the template editor. Save the changes.

<html>
 <head>
    <title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>
    <script>
      <MainOrArchivePage>
          window.location.href='http://labnol.org/'
      </MainOrArchivePage>
      <Blogger> <ItemPage>
          window.location.href='http://labnol.org/?q=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>'
      </ItemPage> </Blogger>
    </script>
    <MainPage>
      <link rel="canonical" href="http://labnol.org/" />
    </MainPage>
    <Blogger><ItemPage>
      <link rel="canonical" href="http://labnol.org/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" />
    </ItemPage></Blogger>
 </head>
 <body>
    <MainOrArchivePage>
        <h1><a href="http://labnol.org"><$BlogTitle$></a></h1>
    </MainOrArchivePage>
    <Blogger><ItemPage>
        <h1>
          <a href="http://labnol.org/?blogger=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>">
            <$BlogItemTitle$>
          </a>
        </h1>
        <$BlogItemBody$>
    </ItemPage></Blogger>
 </body>
</html>

We are almost done. Open any page on your old Blogger blog and it should redirect you to the corresponding WordPress page. We are using a permanent 301 redirect on the WordPress side and therefore all the Google Juice and PageRank should pass to your new WordPress pages with time (video).The above method works for regular blogspot.com URLs and also country-specific Blogger domains like blogspot.co.uk or blogspot.in that Google added about an year ago to better handle censorship related requests.

        The Blogger Import tool moves only posts and comments from Blogger to WordPress but not images. And that should be fine because the image URLs in your imported WordPress posts are still pointing to blogspot.com (where the images were originally hosted) and therefore nothing would break.

Switch RSS Feed from Blogger to WordPress

When you move from Blogger to WordPress, the URL of your RSS feed will change as well. Go to Blogger -> Settings -> Other and choose Post Feed Redirect URL under Site Feed. Here you can type the web address of your new WordPress RSS feed here and the existing RSS subscriber will automatically move to your new feed. If you are using FeedBurner, just replace the source from Blogger RSS feed to your new WordPress feed.

Migration to WordPress Complete – What Next?

Now that your new WordPress site is up and running with all the old Blogger posts, here are a few important things you should do:

1. Add your new WordPress site to Google Webmaster, verify the site ownership and and also submit a XML Sitemap listing the URLs on your new site.
2. Implemet Google Authorship so that your profile pictures appears against your article in Google Search results.
3. Follow these WordPress optimization tips, install some of the essential plug-ins and pay special attention to improving the security of your WordPress site.

Thanks to Mr. Amit Agarwal www.labnol.orgTo get new updates Like us on FaceBook