5 free apps to make your old Android smartphone feel faster

You don’t need to buy a new Android phone every six months. Instead just use these apps to ensure that your Android phone feels brand new for a long, long time.


One of the biggest complaint I hear from most Android smartphone users is that their phone feels “slow” especially when compared to the new Android smartphone their friend just bought. If you own a budget Android smartphone (think- a phone priced between Rs. 8K and Rs. 15K), chances are that about six months down the line, you will start wishing for a new phone. This is not only because you start feeling that your phone is getting slower, and its battery is running out quicker, but also because of the staggering rate at which new Android phones are being launched with incremental specs updates.

So, if you’re one such individual, let these five (free!) apps help you rise from the pits of despair by making your “old” Android phone feel new again.

1. Android Assistant

Price: Free

Download Link 

Android Assistant is perhaps the only system optimizer tool that you need for your Android phone, but if I stopped right here, then this wouldn’t be much of a story, would it? The app includes a bunch of features that you’d find in individual apps out there such as a system monitor, a task manager, a file manager and a power saver among many others. The app’s interface is a little stark but good enough to tell you what you need to.

This is a great one-stop app that you can use to optimize your Android phone’s performance and improve its battery life.

2. Smart RAM Booster

Price: Free

Download Link

Smart RAM Booster is an app you should use if you notice regular slowdowns when you’re running an app. This app lets you ‘kill’ low priority apps that may be hogging system memory and reassigning RAM to an app that you’re running at the moment. Keep in mind that Android does intelligently assign system RAM according to use, therefore do not make a habit of killing apps manually. Instead, only rely on this app if you’re having occasional trouble with a single app.

3. Greenify

Price: Free

Download Link

As I mentioned above, it’s not always a good idea to manually ‘kill’ apps that may be running in the background. Doing this regularly could actually ‘break’ the functionality of an app. That’s why Greenify is such a great app to have. It improves the performance and battery life of your Android phone not by killing apps but rather by putting them into ‘hibernation’. This means that apps that have been selected for hibernation will still run in the background but will do so while taking up very little RAM and consequently, will improve battery life.

4. Clean Master

Price: Free

Download Link

Like Android Assistant, Clean Master also offers a bunch of features including a built-in antivirus and a RAM booster. However, the focus of the app is its ability to clean the cache and junk files that may have accumulated in your system and SD card memory. If you have a lot of apps installed and have been using your Android phone for a while, chances are that a lot of these unnecessary files may have piled up, which could result in a performance hit. Clean Master takes care of that and, as a bonus, it also gives you the option to clean up your Google search and Web history on the phone.

5. Watchdog Task Manager

Price: Free

Download Link 

Look, I hate to act like your mother, but I do have to keep reminding you that killing apps in Android is not something you should do regularly. If at any point in time you feel like you have to kill an app, make sure you do it for a good reason. And hey, Watchdog Task Manager is an app that will help you keep track of such reasons. Even the app says “Stop killing your apps randomly” on its Play Store page, so you know it has its heart in the right place. What the app does is monitor how much system resource every app is utilizing and then gives you a notification when it sees an app hogging up resources and slowing down your phone. At this point, you can use Watchdog to kill that app and prevent it from restarting immediately (a behaviour common to a lot of Android apps).

Have I missed out on your favourite app? Let me know in the comments below

Author : Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill 

Top 11 Security Tools In Kali Linux 1.0.6

When it comes to security and penetration testing, Kali Linux is the talk of the town. The new version recently arrived and here’s what’s happening. 

Kali Linux comes with over 300 security tools pre-installed. So, it is rather difficult to pick 10 odd as the best. But we gave it a shot and this is what we would come up with.

1. AirCrack

You already know what Aircrack does don’t you? Just in case, it cracks WPA or WEP router passwords. In Kali Linux 1.0.6, you have a GUI for Aircrack in the Fern WiFi Cracker, through which you can avoid the command line and still use all the features of Aircrack.

2. Burp Suite

This is an integrated platform that can be put to use for testing the security of web applications. Kali Linux 1.0.6 comes with the free version, which can be upgraded to the professional edition by paying $299 per year.

3. Hydra

This free brute force password cracking tool allows you to attack multiple accounts with a single or a list of passwords.

4. John the Ripper

This password cracker is known for its speed and revered by many as the best in its segment. Well, the new version of Kali comes with Johnny, which is a GUI for this tool. Let’s you escape the command line again.

5. Maltego

Find out what or who is connected to what or who. This is what the Maltego tool is used for. It explores links between various sources.

6. Metasploit Framework

Again with the GUI, this time it is Nexpose, which gives you a front end for this well known framework.

7. Armitage

If Metasploit is too complex for you, then Kali 1.0.6 comes with an alternative in Armitage. Try this one.

8. Nmap

This free and open source utility for network discovery and security auditing is famous for its usefulness. But, it is not easy to use this, as you would know if you’ve watched that hacking seen from the Matrix movies (yes, they really used Nmap). So, you can make use of Zenmap, your trusty sidekick, we mean GUI, for Nmap.

9. Zed Attack Proxy

This is a free and open source penetration testing tool that can be used for finding vulnerabilities in web applications. Just in case you don’t want to pay for Burp Suite maybe.

10. Sqlmap

Want to detect any SQL Injection flaws? This is the tool that you would want to use for it.

11. Wireshark

You know what this is. This network protocol analyser features on almost all of our or anyone else’s top security tools lists. Kali Linux 1.0.6 comes with this pre-installed.

Author : Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

Network Security Tools For Security Researchers And Penetration Testers To Use

Penetration testing and network security is a pretty vast topic. These tools cover almost every aspect of it.

Network security is one of the biggest buzzwords nowadays. There are a number of security tools available, each with its own unique ability. That said, there are some that you will find on almost every security expert’s computer. These are the ones that are the best and should be on your computer too. Here are 30 of the top network security tools, stay tuned for more.

1. Wireshark

This one was known as Ethereal till the summer of 2006. It is an open source platform network protocol analyzer.

Latest release: 26 July 2013, version 1.10.1

2. Metasploit

This is an open source platform that was released in 2004. It can be launched for developing, testing and using exploit codes. While the framework is free and open source, since its acquisition by Rapid7 in 2009, but there are paid editions to it too.

Latest release: 7 December 2012, version 4.5

3. Nessus

This is another one of the most popular network security tools. It is a vulnerability scanner that costs $1,200. It used to be a free and open source application till 2005.

Latest release: 7 May 2013, version 5.2.1

4. Aircrack

This tool used the best cracking algorithms for 802.11 A/b/g WEP and WPA cracking. It is best used to recover wireless keys.

Latest release: 24 April 2010, version 1.1

5. Snort

This is one of the best available network intrusion applications that has its forte in traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks. Snort itself is free and open source, but SourceFire (the parent company) offers other complimentary products at a price. In addition, it offers its own VRT-certified rules for $499 per sensor per year.

Latest release: 30 July 2013, version 2.9.5.3

6. Cain and Abel

How is this security tool different from others? Well, it’s a Windows only tool, which is very unlike other tools that support Linux and UNIX before Windows. Cain & Abel is a password recovery tool that can handle a number of tasks.

Latest release: 3 December 2011, version 4.9.43

7. BackTrack

If you’re even remotely involved with hacking you would have heard of BackTrack. This is a Live CD Linux distribution that comes from Whax and Auditor. It has a huge suite of security and forensics tools and is known to be the hacker’s distribution.

Latest release: 13 August 2012, version 5 R3

8. Netcat

Want to read data across UDP or TCP network connections? This is the go to tool for most security personnel for this purpose. First released in 1995 by Hobbit, it is one of the most popular security tools. Interestingly, it hasn’t been maintained despite its popularity. Recognising its usefulness, the Nmap Project made a modern version of the tool called Ncat.

Latest release: 20 March 1996, version 1.10

9. tcpdump

This is a network traffic sniffer that lost its popularity to Wireshark. It still have a respectably large user base though.

Latest release: 20 May 2013, version 4.4.0

10. John the Ripper

Compatible with the Linux, UNIX and Mac OS X platforms, this is a commonly used password cracker.

Latest release: 30 May 2013, version 1.8.0

11. Kismet

This tool is a wireless network detector, intrusion detection system and network sniffer that is used quite commonly for wardriving, warflying, warwalking and warskating.

Latest release: 11 April 2011, version Kismet 2011-03-R2

12. OpenSSH/PuTTY/SSH

This is the go to tool for logging into and executing commands on a remote machine.

13. Burp Suite

This is a tool that is used for attacking web applications. The limited version is available for free, while the pro version costs $299.

Latest release: 3 June 2011, version 1.4.01

14. Nikto

This is an open source web server that performs tests against other web servers for multiple items. This includes more than 6,400 potentially dangerous files/CGIs and other checks.

Latest release: 20 February 2011, version 2.1.4

15. Hping

You can use this one to send custom TCP, ICMP and UDP packets and then display replies. The tool was inspired by the ping command but can be used to perform far more controlled probes.

Latest release: 5 November 2005, version hping3-20051105

16. Ettercap

If a man in the middle attack on LAN networks is what you’re looking at then Ettercap is the tool that you need.

Latest release: 22 March 2013, version 0.7.6-Locard

17. Sysinternals

This tool can be used to gain access to a number of small windows utilities that can be used for low-level windows hacking.

Latest release: 4 February 2011

18. w3af

This is a powerful framework that is used for searching and exploiting web application vulnerabilities.

Latest release: 11 October 2011, version 1.1

19. OpenVAS

This is a vulnerability scanner that was forked from Nessus. The last free version of Nessus, before it became a proprietary tool in 2005, was used for this.

Latest release: 17 April 2013, version 6.0

20. Scapy

Interactive packer manipulation, network scanning, packet generating, packet sniffing, are the activities that Scapy excels in. It is a low level tool and you need Python to interact with it.

Latest release: 28 February 2011, version 2.2.0

20. Ping/telnet/dig/traceroute/whois/netstat

This is a basic security auditing tool that is still very useful. You may be ignoring these for other high tech tools, but knowing these is important too.

21. THC Hydra

This is one tool that has been revered for brute force cracking on temote authentication services. The application can manage rapid dictionary attacks against over 30 protocols like https, ftp, http, telnet, smb, a number of databases and others.

Latest release: 23 May 2012, version 7.3

22. Perl/Python/Ruby

Secripting languages allow you to write your own canned security tools. You can also use them to modify existing tools.
no rating Paros proxy (#24, 8)

23. Paros proxy

This is a Java-based web proxy server that can be used for finding out the web vulnerabilities.

Latest release: 8 August 2006, version 3.2.13

24. NetStumbler

This is a Windows tool that can be used for finding open wireless access points. It is free but not open source and is a Windows-only application.

Latest release: 1 April 2004, version 0.4.0

25. Google

You may think that this is a weird choice for a list like this. But you’re wrong. Google’s database can be is recognised as an important security tool by experts and penetration testers everywhere.

26. OSSEC HIDS

This performs log analysis, rootkit detection, integrity checking, time-based alerting and active response. It is also used as a SEM/SIM solution/

Latest release: 16 November 2012, version 2.7

27. WebScarab

This tool records requests and responses that it observes and lets the operator review them in different ways. It is a tool that can expose the functioning of HTTP(S)-based applications.

Latest release: 20 August 2010, version 20100820-1632

28. Core Impact

This tool is considered by many to be the most powerful exploitation tool that is available right now. It is also much more expensive than others though.

Latest release: 8 August 2011, version 12

29. sqlmap

This is an open source penetration testing tool, which can be used in order to automate the detection and exploitation of SQL injection flaws.

Latest release: 11 April 2011, version 0.9

30. TrueCrypt

This is a very useful open source disk encryption system for Mac, Windows and Linux-based systems.

Latest release: 7 February 2012, version 7.1a 

Author :Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

Useful Cloud Computing Tutorials

Want to do your own thing on the cloud? Play around with Twitter or Facebook? Build Facebook apps? Well, these books could be a great way to start with. 

Cloud computing is the future, you may have heard someone say this before. Here are 11 tutorials that will get you through various aspects of dealing with the cloud.

1. Using Google Weather API In A C# Application

This one teaches you the basics of getting the weather with Google weather API.

2. Using Tropo & Python To Have The Phone Tell Us The Weather

According to the user, this tutorial teaches you to set up an automatic phone system and, using Python, design it to answer the phone and tell you the weather in your area based on the zip code you give the program.

3. FaceBook FBML Ajax / PHP Interaction

Did you think HTML is the only markup language that you need to know about? Well, think again. This tutorial deals with three languages, FBML (Facebook Markup Language), PHP and Ajax.

4. Faces In The Cloud: High-Throughput Data Processing W / Message Queues

Want to set up a grid computing cluster that can leverage a high-performing message queue for arbitration? Here is a user teaching you just how to do so.

5. Scraping Tweets Using Python And Flask

Most scripting languages are good at scraping information of a web page, but Python is exceptionally good at it. So, this tutorial takes the Python programming language and the Flask micro-framework and teaches you how to scrape tweets.

6. Icon Using Python And Google Translate

This tutorial covers three things. First, it teaches you how to use Python to write a simple script for translating text to be used in other applications. Second, you will learn to scrape HTML using BeautifulSoup and lastly, using the Google AJAX service for translation purposes.

7. Google Data Java Client API

The Google Data Protocol is an application package interface designed by Google, which in turn allows developers to interact with various Google functions, like docs etc.

8. [PHP] Building Automated Twitter Bot With Twitters API Functionality

This tutorial teaches you how to make a bot for Twitter using the PHP programming language.

9. Facebook PHP API And XFBML On Iframe

You need to understand PHP, HTML and JavaScript for this one. It teaches you how to make a Facebook application using PHP and XFBML.

10. Using The Python Twitter API

This tutorial teaches you how to write a basic Twitter client using the Python Twitter API.

11. [C#] Twitter API: Get User Timeline

This user generated tutorial gets you started with building a .Net library for the Twitter API. 

Author : Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

50 Open Source Software For Your Windows PC

Using a Windows PC doesn’t mean that you have to be trapped within it. There are many open source applications that run on Microsoft’s Windows. Here are 50 of the best of the lot!

App Collections: These are tools that contain a numbebr of open source software within them. They are complete packages that can run on Windows.

1. OpenDisc

2. PortableApps.com

3. winPenPack

Antivirus: You already know an what Antivirus is, add something get a good one, for example, use this software

4. ClamWin Free Antivirus

Astronomy: These are nifty tools that map the night sky for you and show you how the sky is looking at a particular moment from a particular point.

5. Celestia

6. Stellarium

Audio Tools: While VLC is the obviously the most popular open source audi player on Windows, there are some others that cater to musicians and audio/video editors as well.

7. Amarok

8. Audacity

9. Clementine

10. MuseScore

Backup: It is always advised that you should backup the data on your machine. This is where these open source tools can be very handy.

11. AMANDA

12. Areca Backup

13. Redo

Blogging: WordPress is the suite of choice for those looking to develop their own websites and blogs. It contains a number of functionalities and features.

14. WordPress

Browsers: You would of course known about Mozilla’s Firefox internet browser. This is the most popular open source brower used by many people all over the world. In addition, there are

15. Chromium

16. Firefox

17. Tor Browser

CAD

18. BRL-CAD

Groupware: These are software that help you track and manage group projects where you are collborating with a lot of other people.

19. Collabtive

20. Feng Office

Compression:

21. PeaZip

Content Management Content Management Systems are computer programs that allow the publishing, editing and modification of content from a central source. Best examples of this would be Drupal and Jhoomla.

22. DNN (formerly DotNetNuke)

23. Drupal

24. Joomla

25. Plone

Customer Relationship Management: These software aid companies in future and current customer relationship maintenance.

26. Sugar Community Edition

Databases: Windows may not exactly be a friend of open source, but no one can deny its contributions to the tech world. Many programmers have created the best of programs while using the Windows OS. For this they needed databases and many of them used open source databases.

27. Firebird

28. MySQL

29. PostgreSQL

Data Destruction: Recycing it just as important on your computer as it is in real life. There comes a time when you need to get rid of data. This is where this software comes in handy.

30. BleachBit

31. Darik’s Boot And Nuke

Desktop Enhancements: These are software that add various elements to your desktop. This could include sticky notes, screensavers and a bunch of other interactive components.

32. Electric Sheep

33. PNotes

34. VirtuaWin

Desktop Publishing: These are page layour publishers. Other examples of this would be QuarkExpress, Adobe Indesign etc.

35. Scribus

Email Client: These clients can manage your email, especially the one mentioned here, which integrates beautifully with the Firefox internet brower

36. Thunderbird

Encryption: These software can make encrypting files so easy that you sometimes have to do nothing more than make a simple mouse click.

37. AxCrypt

38. Gpg4win

39. TrueCrypt

Enterprise Resource Planning: As the name suggests, these software aid enterprises in their planning purposes.

40. ADempiere

41. Apache OFBiz

42. Compiere ERP + CRM Business Solution

43. Openbravo

44. Postbooks/xTuple ERP

Games: Windows has been the better platform for games, but open source games have still penetrated this platform and made a name for themselves.

45. 0 A.D.

46. Alien Arena

47. AssaultCube Reloaded

48. FlightGear

49. Frets on Fire

50. GCompris

Author : Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

9 Online Ethical Hacking Tools That You Can Use

<!––> A hacker may be a person with deep understanding of computers, but they still use various tools to make their lives easier. Want to be a hacker? An ethical hacker nowadays has tons of job opportunities available for him. This is a result of rising security concerns over almost all your online activities. Here are 9 good tools that you can use for your endeavours. 1. Image Metadata Parser With GPS Location: This tool can track your physical locations using the GPS on your 2. Retrieve Public Information Facebook Users: Use this to get public user information from Facebook users. 3. How to Know My Public IP Address in 4 Steps: Knowing your public IP address is an important step for a hacker. 4. Free Alexa Page Rank Checker: Use this to check the Alexa page rank of websites, yours and other websites as well. 5. Google PageRank Checker and Incoming Links Checker: This is to use the Google Page Rank check for your website. 6. Check Server Header Tool : HTTP Status Code Checker Details: This is to check the server header tool. The value returned shou. 7. Online Whois Lookup Tool: If you want to find out who owns a particular domain or IP address, this would help. 8. Reverse IP Address Domain Check Online Tools: In a reverse IP address or domain check, a particular IP or domain is picked up and other websites associated to the websrver that the IP is pointing to. 9. Website Information Lookup Beta v0.1: This service tries to find out as much information about a website as possible. Author : Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

Top Hacking Forums, Tools And Countries That CISOs Must Know!

The chief information security officer (CISO) is one of the most important member of any organisation nowadays.

With security issues online being at an all time high, CISOs have their work cut out for them. In such a situation these websites and resources would come in handy. Forums 1. Hack Forums: This is a good site for both beginner and experienced hackers. Plenty of resources and useful discussions are available here. 2. Hack This Site!: As per the website, “Hack This Site is a free, safe and legal training ground for hackers to test and expand their hacking skills. More than just another hacker wargames site, we are a living, breathing community with many active projects in development, with a vast selection of hacking articles and a huge forum where users can discuss hacking, network security, and just about everything. Tune in to the hacker underground and get involved with the project.” 3. Hack Hound: Programming, malware analysis, Windows security and server security, you will find all of those topics and more on this one. 4. Binary Revolution Forums: From the website, “HackHound is a community of Security and Programming Enthusiasts who coexist to form a friendly and productive Forum dedicated to providing a fair, safe and enjoyable environment for it’s members.” Tools 1. Armitage: This is an open source initiative that allows you to identify weak and vulnerable machines in a network with a few clicks only. 2. Hashcat: As a CISO, you should know how important a strong password is. In case you had doubts, this tool will show you how easy hacking a password can be. 3. WiFiTe: This is a cross platform tool written in Python. It helps you determine how weak or strong your wireless network is. 4. Wireshark: Want to sniff over networks and collect data? Wireshark has been reccomended by many a professional. 5. Social Engineer Toolkit: This is another Python-driven tool. This one helps in penetration testing around social engineering. Top Hacking Countries 1. Hungary 2. Italy 3. India 4. Romania 5. China Author : Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

10 Ways To Make Learn Ruby by Fun

Would you rather learn a programming language by sitting down and reading books on it? Well, we’re not saying that’s not important, but once you have acquired some skills in the language, challenges and contests based on that language are the best ways to learn it at an advanced level. Try these websites out for challenges, competitions and even games that’ll teach you Ruby!


1. Ruby Quiz: This website hosts a quiz on every Friday, giving users the weekend (48 hours) to solve the quiz. The solutions can then be posted on the discussion forums.

2. CodeKata: These are practice sessions on Ruby that help you sharpen your skills in the language. Each practice session is known as a Kata.

3. Project Euler: The list of problems hosted on this website is growing by the day. You usually need to solve the problems using mathematics. You can check and tally your answer once done.

4. Ruby Programming Challenge for Newbies: If you’re an expert Ruby user then these challenges may not be as interesting for you. The challenges hosted here are usually posted by the community itself.

5. Coding Dojo: In martial arts, the dojo is the place for training and sparring. This is a website where a group of coders come together to work over a particular problem (kata).

6. Ruby Battleship: This website hosts an online Ruby battleship competition. You have to build your own player and then submit it. Install Limelight to watch your player battle.

7. RRobots: This is a pretty old competition or game for Ruby. You build your own artificial intelligence in this and control the robot tanks and destroy your enemies.

8. RubyWarrior: This is a game that teaches you Ruby in an interactive manner. In this game, you play a warrior who has to climb to the top of a set of stairs. Only, you have to do this using your code.

9. Rails Rumble: This competition was first started in 2007 and has been going on since then. You get 48 hours to develop a web app in Ruby and you have to do your best.

10. TechGig: This is another website that you can use in order to participate in Ruby and Rails contests and test yourself against others.

Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

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15 Important JavaScript Tools For HTML5 Generation

Are you fascinated by jQuery? Well, there are plenty of other Java Script libraries worth checking out offering new features.

JQuery is an awesome JavaScript as it is easy to use. But there are plenty of other JavaScript libraries worth checking out. Some work like jQuery, simplifying basic chores of manipulating the DOM, offering their own advantages. Some have new features for animation, data visualization, or other niches.

Here are 15 JavaScript libraries that are worth adding to your toolset.

• YUI (Yahoo User Inferface): It was the first big, cross-browser toolsets released as open source, and remains one of the biggest and most fertile. Yahoo started its 3rd version in 2009, and both versions 2 and 3 continue to get better. The collection of charts, widgets, and other tools has more variety than almost any other JavaScript library.

• Mashi: One of the stated goals of HTML5, is to replace the Flash plug-in, the gold standard for making sprites and letters dance across the screen. This change is slowly coming as the gaming and presentation industries start to duplicate some of the sophisticated tools available. Mashi is an impressive example of how the sprites can be set in motion offering more than several dozen standard easing functions for moving sprites along a timeline.

• MooTools: Like jQuery and YUI, MooTools offers nice, browser-independent shorthand for manipulating arrays, divs, spans. Its custom library construction tool lets you select the functions you want. Check some boxes and get an entirely optimized version of MooTools with the functions you need and none of the bloat you don’t.

• pp3Dico: The list of game engines for the browser is long and growing as the JavaScript canvas object is better established and relatively consistent. The results don’t look as nice as Flash but the gap will reduce. If you like board games, you’ll like the three-dimensional, orthographic views of game boards from pp3Diso. It takes just a few lines of code to set them up.

• VideoForEverybody: This is like sticking a video tag into your HTML. The behavior of many supposedly standard-compliant browsers is different enough if you try to support them all. A number of good HTML5 libraries let you write standard HTML5 video tags that will be replaced with Flash or QuickTime if the browser isn’t ready to handle your video. This tool offers one of the better libraries, filled with features that operate in the background to smooth delivery on older browsers like IE8.

• Raphaël: There are many terabytes of data just waiting for people to come along. The first generation of HTML5 libraries was more focused on building forms and generating tables. Now a number of libraries are zeroing in on building charts and drawing graphs on the ‘canvas’ object. You’ll find plenty of great options for basic line graphs, bar graphs, and combinations. This is a small JavaScript library that should simplify your work with vector graphics on the Web.

• JSCharts: Among the libraries aimed at chart building JSCharts allows you to create charts in different templates like bar charts, pie charts, or simple line graphs.

• Flot: This produces graphical plots of arbitrary datasets on-the-fly client-side, and it includes interactive features like zooming and mouse tracking.

• Protovis: Some libraries go further for data visualization. The collection of demos for Protovis and D3, a name in shorthand for Data Driven Documents show how sophisticated constructions like Voronoi diagrams and network graphs can illustrate more than the up and down of some value.

• Simile Widgets: These offer a different collection of views for data visualization and are more focused on maps and timelines. Each of these data visualization projects illustrate how you can come up with good ways of turning data into pictures that can help you absorb large volumes of information quickly and efficiently.

• Tile5: Most use the big mapping libraries for standard jobs like showing street addresses. But if you want to change the rendering or fiddle with layers in ways the big libraries don’t allow, this can pull the mapping tiles from such sources as GeoCommons, and lay them out. Thus, you can shove them around just like the maps from Google, Mapquest, or Yahoo. But you can do more. The animation operation can change any of the parameters of the display. This is usually used for panning across the map and landing in one spot.

• jQuery Mobile: As mobile browsers begin to dominate the Web, it is important to package the information in a form that’s easier to browse on smartphones and tablets. However, it is not easy when the fingers are fat and the eyes can’t focus on small fonts. jQuery Mobile, Jo, and Sencha Touch offer touch-friendly menus that dig down into data structures and present the information for the small screen.

• HTML5SQL: You would never want to store a lot of data, so local databases were invented. Taking advantage of them is getting easier as new libraries simplify the details of interacting with the API. HTML5SQL will feed relatively simple SQL statements to the database, allowing you to create tables, fill them with data, and then query them. You’ll spend more time crafting your SQL than your JavaScript.

• TaffyDB: If you don’t want to think in SQL while writing JavaScript,TaffyDB accomplishes much of the same tabular querying with JSON, and the queries and the updates can be chained together.

• Firebug: One of the biggest challenges for JavaScript programmers is to build larger applications as that means more of debugging. While you can get by with embedding alert statements in smaller pages, larger ones require more structure for the debugging information. Firebug, an extension for Firefox, offers an elaborate debugging platform, including conditional breakpoints and the ability to edit the state. The JavaScript can write directly to the console object with three levels of severity.

Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

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10 Useful PHP Tools That Developers Can Use

As the popularity of PHP grows, there are more and more useful PHP tools emerging everyday. 

PHP tools make it easier for a PHP developer to do their work. They conduct various aspects of the work, which would otherwise have taken the developer more time. There are a number of PHP tools available online and these are some of the best.

1. DebugBar: This is a free and open source tol that can be joined to any PHP project and then used for profiling and collecting data. In addition, the tool doesn’t have any dependencies and supports AJAX requests too. It also has generic data collectors for libraries.

2. Monsta FTP: This is an FTP file management tool, which puts the functionality directly in your browser. It is an open source PHP/Ajax cloudware that allows the user to drag and drop files from your computer to your browser for the files to be uploaded. In addition, it also has support for on-screen file editing and runs on Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

3. Phalcon PHP: This is a web framework that comes as a C extension. It has been written in the C programming language and emphasises on platform independence. Being written in C, it runs on Microsoft’s Windows along with GNU/Linux and Apple’s Mac OS X.

4. Pinba: This is a MySQL storage engine that can also be used as a realtime monitoring and statistics server for PHP through MySQL. This tool processes data that has been sent over UDP and returns the statistics in human-readable reports.

5. CaseBox: This is a web application used for managing and storing tasks, records and files. It comes with a desktop-like interface and can create numerous directories in order to store data. It is powered by PHP/MySQL.

6. Munee: When you need to optimise and manipulate website assets, this is the tool that you go for. It is a all-in-one library that has a caching feature. This feature can be used for caching resources on both the client and the server side. The tool integrate easily with the PHP image manipulation library as well.

7. PHPImageWorkshop: This is an open source class that uses the GD library allowing the user to manage images using PHP. It also allows the user to superpose layers and layer groups. Each layer group can have a background image.

8. Sylius: This is a free and open source e-commerce solution that is based on Symfony2. It can manage stores of any size and many products or categories of products. In addition, the products can have different shipping details and tax rates etc. It also comes with Omnigateway, which is a multi-gateway payment processing library.

9. Pico: This is an open source content management system application, which has been built using PHP. It uses flat-files as its database.

10. phpMyFAQ: Lastly, the open source application PHP F.A.Q. is a good tool for building F.A.Q. systems. It comes with a powerful admin interface and the tool is quite stable as well. This interface can be used in order to manage various categories, users, entries and other information. 

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Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

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