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Friday, August 21, 2015

TechSource: Using Android Apps for Keeping the Family Safe

TechSource: Using Android Apps for Keeping the Family Safe


Using Android Apps for Keeping the Family Safe

Posted: 20 Aug 2015 08:38 PM PDT

If you have kids, you know how hard or fact impossible it is to wean them off their smartphones. Constant texting, calling, and selfie-snapping are essential elements of the modern youth lifestyle. And to challenge that, is a herculean task. But with every dark cloud there's a silver lining. Similarly, every smartphone brings with it a valuable tool that can assist a great deal in protecting your family.

Thanks to the GPS technology many smartphones come built with, you can easily locate your family members on a map and reach them whenever they are in need of your help. This is also a great way to keep track of teenagers when they go out to a party late at night thus keeping you up worrying about them. Furthermore, even when you are in a supermarket or a mall, you can prevent your kids from getting lost by tracking them on a map. The aforementioned safety measures don't come built-in with a new smartphone, however, there are some really good apps that provide those features at a very low cost or for free. Following is a list of few such apps:


Life360 - Family Locator 

Life360 is a well-designed and useful family safety app that is great for small or even big families. Once installed, you can view your family members' locations on a private map along with their display pictures. What's good about Life360 is that it has a "Check-in" button like Foursquare that lets your kids or you punch in their current location. Also, if there is any trouble, you can push the "Alert" button and notify your parents. Among other features, this free app is great for chatting up with your family members while you are away. 



ZoeMob Family Locator

Much like the aforementioned Life360, ZoeMob too serves as a GPS tracker for your family members. What is great about this app is that it comes with a GeoFence feature that lets you receive alerts whenever your family members arrive at school or at home. This is great for working moms who want to get notified once their kids get home from school. Furthermore, ZoeMob also features a family messenger app for chatting with other family members. 



Family Safe

Family Safe is a GPS tracking system that can be used for tracking family members' locations. The application operates on 2 modes: Guardian profile and Protected profile. Under the Guardian profile (aimed at parents), you will be able to add your kids, elders, or any other relatives to your list and locate them on the map. If they're in trouble, you can quickly drive over to them using Google Navigate. There is also an option to call your relative right from the app. Under the protected profile (aimed at kids/elders), you're able to send a quick alert to a guardian signaling any emergency. 



Family Safety GPS Tracker

If you want to track specific members of your family using their phone's GPS tracker, this app is worth a try. It has a unique functionality that gives you your relatives' GPS position at specific predefined intervals. This means that, you can get alerts about your kids' positions every one or two hours and not every minute (which can be quite annoying for both parties). Another good thing the app comes with is the emergency button. Just press the power key (even when your phone is in your pocket) four times and it will sound an emergency alarm. Also, if you want to know your child's location using SMS only (useful for older phones), you can simply send the SMS : REQUEST LOCATION and you'll get the location. Overall, a clean and simple app that does what it says on the tin. 



Family Locator - GPS Tracker

Family Locator is another good app for locating your family members. What's unique about this app is that you can manually set safe or danger zones in the phone. This means that if your child goes into a particular part of the town (let's say the one that's more prone to violence, robbery etc) it will sound an alarm. Similarly, in a safe zone, when your kid leaves a particular zone, it will inform you. Apart from those features, the app has pretty much all the bells and whistles from other Family safety apps like messenger, maps, and real-time location. 



Written by: Abhishek, a regular TechSource contributor and a long-time FOSS advocate.

Monday, August 3, 2015

TechSource: 7 Best Chrome Apps and Extensions for Coders

TechSource: 7 Best Chrome Apps and Extensions for Coders


7 Best Chrome Apps and Extensions for Coders

Posted: 03 Aug 2015 02:16 AM PDT

Whether you are a code ninja or a budding programmer, having a good programming environment is a must. However, with the high amount of time we spend in our browsers and on our Chromebooks, finding any coding tools that are not native is a bit of a daunting task. Thankfully, Chrome with its huge repository of apps and extensions, has us covered pretty well. So, if you are looking for some great coding tools that work perfectly in your Google Chrome browser, read on as we cover the best of the lot. 


Zed Code Editor

Zed Code Editor is a nice, clean-looking code editor designed specially for Chrome. Fully capable of running offline, its dark UI makes you focus on coding and nothing else. What's great about Zed is that it allows you to edit files locally as well as the ones that are stored on your Dropbox or Github account. Zed also supports syntax highlighting for most of the popular programming languages and can complete your code thus saving you the usual typing trouble. Another unique thing about Zed is that it has no tabs, it exists in a simple Chrome window that can be navigated using the goto UI. Built using web technologies like HTML5 and CSS, Zed is probably one of the best code editors you can have not just on Chrome but on desktop as well.

 

Code Cola 

If you are a web developer, you will love Code Cola. It is a simple little extension that allows you to edit an online page's CSS in a visual way. Once installed, you can treat the whole web as your playground as you edit pretty much any page that you find worth experimenting on. 



Caret

Modeled on the famed Sublime Text, Caret is an offline-capable text editor with syntax highlighting capabilities. What is special about Caret is that it is a great companion for users who love their Chromebooks thanks to its syncing capabilities. You can edit a file on your home computer and then you can continue working on it whenever you're traveling. Just hook your Google account to Caret and it will let you carry on where you left off. 



Text

What Text lacks in features, it makes up in simplicity. Though definitely not as feature rich as the other editors on the list, this one is capable enough to become your default text editor. It has a clean and simple UI and it handles opening multiple files pretty well. With syntax highlighting for most major programming languages, Text can serve as a great, lightweight companion for a budding coder. 



Tailor

Tailor is an experimental code editor for Chrome. With support for Git, it lets you work on multiple files with full syntax highlighting enabled. Though it doesn't have as many features, it is still a very simplistic, bare-bones app that works perfectly well offline. Though still in heavy development, it will be interesting to watch out for future additions to this project.



ShiftEdit

If you are a web developer, you'll love Shift Edit. The online IDE lets you develop in PHP, Ruby, HTML, CSS and JavaScript with full syntax highlighting. You can then publish those files through SFTP, FTP, and Dropbox to any location you want. Despite taking a freemium approach to an IDE, ShiftEdit does live up to the expectations many web developers have from a good coding tool.



GistBox 
 
If you are a developer who spends most of your coding life on GitHub, this next app is just for you. Once installed, you'll be able to collect the useful code snippets you find on a daily basis and organize them according to a programming language, project, or goal. Another cool function of Gitbox is the ability to quickly search through your text files. Just enter your query with a # or a keyword and the results show up instantly. What stands out in Gistbox is its simple UI and easy-to-use layout that makes it a treat to work with.