Text in Chrome looks blurry/fuzzy/pixelated

After recent update of Chrome 37 (at the end of August start of September 2014) the text in my favorite browser became not so clear as it was just before the update.

Here’s a sample:
chrome text rendering problems

You can notice that text on both buttons is not quite readable, as well as the text below has also some extra pixels…

The problem is apparently with DirectWrite rendering system. Launch Chrome and enter chrome://flags into the browser’s address bar. This will enable access to a many hidden and experimental features, so be really careful. Locate Enable DirectWrite. You can quickly find it using Chrome’s on-page search feature (Control-F or F3). Choose Enable and relaunch the browser.

UPDATE: You can also enter this into browser’s address bar chrome://flags/#disable-direct-write since this will directly take you to DirectWrite Option.

After doing it your screen should look like this:

Chrome DirectWrite

Here are the same picture now:
chrome text rendering problems fixed
Now text rendering is much better.

I hope this helped you out!
Leave your comments in the comments box below.

How to Remove Facebook Albums from Gallery App on Samsung Galaxy S3 or S4

I have Samsung Galaxy S4 and my girlfriend owns the Samsung Galaxy S3. Recently, after a Facebook app upgrade, all her Facebook albums started to appear at her Gallery. Now she really has lots of pictures and that her Gallery looks like a mess! Not to mention that all those pictures take space/memory on her phone and that she don’t need several years old pictures from her Facebook account on her phone too.

Since I already had experience on how to remove Picasa Albums from Samsung Galaxy phones (an blog post article I wrote last year) I started trying out different things on how to get rid of those Albums from her Gallery app without having to delete them one by one. I needed a geek solution to this problem and after trying out different things I finally had it. (This solution doesn’t require you to uninstall and install Facebook app.)

So if you want to REMOVE those pictures you should skip “Masking the problem” section.

Masking the problem:
1. Open Gallery app.
2. Tap the Menu key then select Content to Display in the menu.
3. Disable/deselect Content in Facebook
This method will just hide the pictures so you don’t see them when you go to Gallery app but they will still stay on your phone and take up memory on your phone.

Removing Facebook albums and pictures from your phone:
1. Open Gallery app.
2. Tap the Menu key then select Settings in the menu.
3. Tap on your Facebook account and in the bottom click on Remove Account.
4. Go to Settings Tap Application manager.
5. Swipe to left until you reach the All screen.
6. Find Facebook and tap on it and press Clear Data
7. Find Gallery, tap on it and press Clear Data
8. Go to your Facebook app and log in again (since steps 3 and 6 logs you out).
This method should properly remove all your Facebook Albums from your Gallery app and your phone storage!

I sure hope this helped you out.
Don’t hesitate to leave any comments!

How to restore missing apps after updating Samsung Galaxy S4 to Android 4.4.2 KitKat?

Today I have updated Android on my Samsung Galaxy S4 to version 4.4.2 Kit-Kat and after the device booted I noticed that about half of my installed applications are missing! And I freaked out!

Instantly I started looking for the solution to this problem and it’s really easy and stupid. All you need to do is simply to reboot the device. To do that simply hold the Power button and when the menu appears select the Reboot. When the phone boots all missing apps will be back.

In my case all the apps are now not in the positions I placed them so I had to re-organize them again but at least that’s not a problem and is less time consuming then finding them and installing them again.

One thing I also noticed is that I’ve got Google Drive application installed on my phone. Just another app in my bloatware folder I guess…

How to disable hibernation and remove hiberfil.sys file

The easiest way is to just start command line as administrator like this
Run command prompt as administrator

and execute this single command:

powercfg /h off

This guide is just for Windows 7 and it will disable hibernation and remove hiberfil.sys file.
This is recommended if you use SSD drive.

How to setup your own Cloud

Problems:
– Have you ever wondered how to setup your own private Cloud service?
– Is there any (preferably self hosted) alternative to DropBox, Google Drive, SkyDrive… ?
– Services like Dropbox and Google Drive are really good but they can cost you money if you need more space.
– You have tried all the alternatives to Dropbox and Google Drive but you need something different?
– Do you really need all the futures they provide?
– Do you need more features (like syncing calendars, tasks, contacts and music)?
– Do you want to be able to install pre-made or develop your own plugins for your cloud?
– Can we really trust companies like Google or Dropbox them with our data?
– Are you a small company or start-up and you can’t afford a $795/year for Dropbox team service?
– You also need iPhone and Android application so you can access your files on your phone?
– You also want a Windows, Mac or Linux Desktop application and Web access?
– You want to host that could on your company server or inhouse? And you want it on a sub-domain like cloud.yourcompany.com?
– And you want it free or really cheap?

Not a problem! We got you covered with all that!!!

The Solution
The solution to problems listed (and un-listed) above is really simple. All you need is to install ownCloud on your server/hosting. This software is a PHP/MySQL powered so it will work on just about any Linux server and is released under AGPL license.

Getting Hosting
In case you have hosting (shared/vps/cloud/dedicated) you can skip this paragraph.
If you don’t have one – you can get it pretty cheap these days and my advice is to go with DigitalOcean. They will provide you with great entry level VPS (512MB of DDR3 RAM, 1 Intel Xeon 2GHz Core, 20GB od SSD hard disk space and 1TB of bandwidth) for just $5. Did I mention it’s SSD powered – so it’s blazing fast! Plus you can deploy your VPS in US or NL and you can add backups for 20% (in this case for $1 extra a month). New VPS is provisioned in 60 seconds and you pay per hour of use (not monthly). So you’re invited to play bit with different linux distributions, geo-locations and sizes etc.. and to fully test it out before you put it in production use.

Detailed installation instructions for Digital Ocean can be found in here and if you need any help in setting it up – feel free to contact me.

Installing OwnCloud on shard hosting
The installation process is easy and it’s similar to installing just about any PHP/MySQL script (like WordPress for eg.).
Here’s step by step guide:
1. Download the web installer from this url: https://download.owncloud.com/download/community/setup-owncloud.php
2. Upload setup-owncloud.php to your web space
3. Point your web browser to setup-owncloud.php on your webspace
4. Follow the instructions and configure ownCloud
5. Login to your newly created ownCloud instance!
In case you need any help with the setup feel free to contact me

Downloading Desktop Client
There are Desktop Sync Applications already developed for Windows, Linux and Mac OS. All you need to do is to download them and install them.

iOS and Android Applications
You can get them from Apple Store or from Google Play. They are not free but are really cheap and cost only $0.99 to install. Here’s a nice YouTube tutorial of Android Application:

Feature list of ownCloud
– Access, Share and Sync your data
– Tasks, Contacts, Calendar, Galleries and Music
– Public API
– Templates
– SSL Encryption
– Powerful Search
– File Versioning
– File Un-Delete
– Download whole folders as ZIP archives
– LDAP Active Directory
– User Management
– User Quotes and Groups
– Internal Messages (free 3rd party app)
– External Storage (access data from AmazonS3, GoogleDocs, DropBox, FTP…)
– PDF viewer in browser (no plugins required)
– ODF Document Viewer (file formats: .odt, .odp, .ods)
– Image Viewer and Media Player (free 3rd party app)
– Text Editor (PHP editor with syntax highlighting)
– Translated into many laguages
– Migration and backup of accounts
– Application store (so you can expand your cloud with extra plugins)
– If you are HUGE company or organisation you should check Enterprise Edition at ownCloud.com

ownCloud Demo
To try out the ownCloud software you can check official ownCloud demo

Conclusion
OwnCloud is really interesting, feature rich cloud platform that enables you to share your data between users and various devices. It can be useful for both individuals and companies/organizations. If you have a need for your own cloud solution or you are looking for alternative to Dropbox, Google Drive or SkyDrive – you should give it a try!