A Wireless USB Stick that Expands your Phone’s Storage (And a Giveaway)

what do you do when your mobile phone has limited storage and there’s no option to add an external SD card? How do you carry all your videos and documents where there’s not an iota of space left on the device? Yes, you do have cloud-based services like Dropbox or Google Drive that add virtually unlimited storage to your phone but you’ve to be connected to the Internet to access your files.

This week I’ve been testing a wireless USB stick from Sandisk that adds storage to your phones and tablets much like a regular USB drive. To get started, you plug the USB device into your laptop or desktop computer and let it charge for about an hour or two. You can also transfer the files to the stick from the computer through Windows Explorer or Finder on Mac.

Once the device is charged, you tap the little power button on the stick to turn it on. Now install the Sandisk Connect app on your mobile phone, go to WiFi settings on your phone and connect to the Wi-Fi hotspot created by the USB stick. That’s it.

The content of the USB drive can now be accessed from your mobile phone. You can stream audio and video files stored on the stick, you can browse photos, open PDF files and other documents in associated mobile apps and you can easily transfer files between the phone and the wireless drive. It is much like plugging a USB stick into your mobile phone but without the wires.

The Wi-Fi network has no security by default but you do have an option to add a password to prevent other nearby devices from connecting to the USB stick.

Unlike using cloud storage, Sandisk’s Connect USB stick requires no Internet connection (it will create a hotspot that your mobile device will connect to) and multiple devices can connect to the same USB drive over Wi-Fi. So if you are carrying an iPad and an Android phone, not only can the two devices connect to the stick simultaneously but it can be used as a temporary medium to transfer files between the iOS and Android device.

The USB stick itself is solidly built with a transparent protective casing though it is obviously heavier and looks bigger than regular USB sticks. The Sandisk mobile app does have some issues but none of them are a deal breaker. In my testing, the iPad app frequently crashed especially when reading big PDF files. The Android app would not allow me to browse the web using cellular connection while the phone was connected to USB drive over Wifi.

Sandisk Connect (Amazon, Flipkart) is compatible with both Android and iOS devices and is available in various capacities from 16GB to 128GB. If you are running out of storage space on your mobile phone and upgrading is not an option, the Connect stick is probably the easiest way to expand your phone’s existing storage.

SanDisk Connect Giveway

SanDisk India is giving away 5 units of the SanDisk Connect Wireless USB stick to @labnol readers in India. All you have to do is fill this short form to participate in the giveaway. SanDisk will announce the winners on November 30 (Monday). Good luck!

How to Link to a Specific Part of a Web Page..

you are reading a web page, say a longform article published in The New York Times, and would like to share it with your friend. The article is lengthy and therefore there’s a possibility that your ‘busy’ friend may skip the parts that you really want him to read. How do you thus focus his attention to the most interesting stuff on the page?

Genius and TLDRify are useful web apps that that let you annotate web pages much like the yellow highlighter pens that you would use on the printed page. The services let you highlight any paragraph or specific sentence on a web page and create direct deep links to the highlighted text. When people click the shared link, they see the original page but with the annotated text.

How to Annotate and Deep Link Web Pages

Genius is a music lyrics website but they also provide a web annotator to help you add context and commentary on any web page. The best part about Genius is that you don’t need to install any bookmarklets or browser extensions to use the annotator. Go to the browser’s address bar and add genius.it/ before the page URL.

Next sign-in with your Twitter, Facebook or Google Account and you’ll be able to add annotations to the current page. To get started, highlight a sentence on the page and click the Genius button that pops-up to add your own comment. Genius will then provide you with a unique hyperlink that will directly open the page with the annotation highlighted.

The next useful app in the category is TLDRify. Here you need a bookmarklet or a browser extension but there’s no need to sign-up for an account to annotate web pages. Also, unlike Genius which may show annotations left by other users on the same page, TLDRify links will only show your own highlights.

While you are on a web page page, select any sentence or paragraph, click the TLDRify bookmarklet and it will create a deep link to the highlighted text. When people click the link, the browser will automatically scroll to the annotated text.

Internally, these services create an exact copy of the web pages on their own servers so even if the original page goes down or has changed, your old citations may still work.

Slamming 'Selective Outrage', Anupam Kher Leads March Against 'Intolerance' Protests

New Delhi:

Actor Anupam Kher led a march to the Rashtrapati Bhavan today in New Delhi to protest against the voices being raised over "intolerance" in the country.

Mr Kher, director Madhur Bhandarkar and painter Vasudev Kamath were among 11 members who handed over a memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee. Mr Kher also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi later in the evening.

The memorandum is signed by 90 public figures, including Kamal Haasan, Shekhar Kapur, Vidya Balan, Raveena Tandon and Vivek Oberoi besides, authors, former judges and musicians.

"Any brutal killing is condemnable. We strongly condemn it and expect swift justice. But if it is used by some people to attempt to defame India at the international platform, then we should be worried," Mr Kher said while reading out their letter to the President.

The actor said the protests, which began with writers returning their Sahitya Akademi awards, shows that rather than addressing their concerns through their respective fields, these people are using media to "hurt the spirit of India".

"Nobody has the right to call our country intolerant. We are secular people and don't believe in selective outrage," Mr Kher said this morning.

Mr Bhandarkar, who joined the march, said, "The whole projection and narrative that is going abroad is wrong. It is a diverse country and of course there are incidents but we all condemn them. There is no two ways about it."

Taking a dig at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, Mr Kher said, "The leader that opposition party is trying to project does not inspire me. He reads out from prepared statements. Our former PM also used to do the same. The passion with which PM Modi talks about India at international platforms, no other PM has ever done that. No other PM has also visited Kashmir so many times. So, why shouldn't I respect him?"

Asked about incidents of journalists being heckled at the rally, Mr Kher said, "If any individual did this during rally, I apologise."

Today's protest was a counter protest against a host of writers, scientists, historians and filmmakers who have raised their voices against what they call "rising intolerance" under the BJP-led government, and have returned various government awards and honours.

Hume tumse Love haiPlease refuse na karna..Ye zero watt ka hope bulb haiPlease ise fuse na karna!Happy Propose Day

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