Netflix Categories browser extension helps you to easily search hidden genre/categories on Netflix and bookmark it for quick access.

Why?

Problem

Netflix has tons of hidden categories but it only shows less than a dozen on the website. It tries to tailor the categories based on your viewing behavior and displays only the ones that it thinks are best for you. But what if you want to browse other categories? Standard Netflix interface does not provide a direct way to do that.

Hard Time Finding A Good Solution

A week before releasing this, I saw many trending articles listing codes to access the secret categories on Netflix. To use that requires searching for the category, copying the code and changing the URL. That was tedious and not worth it. I kept on searching and found a couple of browser extensions of which some have a monthly subscription fee, some mess up with the Netflix interface and some others are full of ads. Most of them actually do a combination of things. Most of them also listed thousands of unverified categories which had no content.

So made it

I decided to give it a shot rather than whining on existing ones. Requirements are simple: easy accessibility, ability to search categories by name and remember favorite categories. Started spending some time that weekend forking one of my other personal projects made for a different purpose to have a basic search and bookmarking functionality. With in a few hours I realized that it was shaping better than what I was hoping for. So why not refine it a bit and release it for public? And here you go! Get Netflix Categories from Chrome web store or grab source code on Github.

It did well on initial launch. It was published in many top tech blogs and news websites, gaining more than 50,000 users in the first week itself (although the trend may not continue) and is also the top most downloaded item on Lifehacker this week.

What's Next

More Verified Categories

There are only a few hundred categories listed on first launch but there are thousands of categories that needs to be verified and added to it. It is easy to grab all the category codes dump online and push them to the extension but there are a few problems. Netflix is believed to have more than 70,000 categories but the majority of them have no content. So I am trying to curate and add only the categories verified to have content. Working on automating this process. Having small but verified set of categories would provide better user experience than thousands of empty ones.

Improved Performance

This quick release also came with quite significant technical debt. Although it works well for the current hundreds of categories, I doubt its ability to handle a few thousands. The JSON data file containing categories list has a lot of unnecessary redundancy,  the "All Categories" view needs to be paginated to handle a large list and search field needs debouncing. I like the functional style of creating UIs where we declare UI components (like this) and render them whenever the state changes. Some might argue against it but I feel it is an elegant way. The current code renders the entire view irrespective of how small/large the change is. That can be a performance bottleneck. We need to figure out rendering differential UI updates to improve performance, or for the better may simply use ReactJS instead of re-inventing the wheel. React has virtual DOM stuff which already does that. Last, the search algorithm itself is pretty primitive. It just filters by running a string matching function over category names array. This can be greatly improved by using a better data structure (may be a Trie?).  It will be released for Firefox and Opera after major issues are resolved.

I encourage you to hack the code and feel free to discuss and critique.

✚ Add to Chrome | Chrome Web Store

Easy Write

I always used to find it difficult to write easy to understand product descriptions for the things I create. I recently came across a Mac app ClearText on Product Hunt. It allows you to write only using the top 1000 English words. It was simple and amazing but the problem is it only works on Macs. I cannot recommend it to my friends or my teammates who use a different operating system. One more problem I had with it is that it forces to remove uncommon words. I rather prefer a tool which encourages to use common words instead of enforcing it.

So, I made it! 😃

I made a flashlight app for Android that actually works well and does'nt have any junk. Install it from Google Play Store and read this article to know why I made this app and how it differs from other similar apps in the market.

What does it do?

This app turn ON the camera flash LED when you need. The app turns ON the flash LED as soon as you open the app and you can toggle it by clicking anywhere on the screen.

Why is this made and how does this differ from other apps?

There are many Android apps which are meant to do the same, but I personally did not like many of the apps which I tried. Most of them do more harm than good. So, I made one which works well and does not annoy.

No Extra Permissions Required

Most Android apps in this category do spy on you. I was wondering why so many apps need access to your contacts, calendar and lots of other information which is not required to run the app. The only reason they do that is to spy on you. They steal your contact information, caller ID, and other stuff which is a total fraud.

A top listed flashlight Android app has access to your photos, Wi-Fi, Caller ID and many more

Check this Android app in the screenshot above. It is one of the top listed flashlight app in Google Play Store. It needs permission to access your photos, files, Wi-Fi information, Location, Caller ID and many more which is insane! This is just an example, but there are many other apps that ask for extra permissions. The app which I made just asks for access to Camera which is required by the Android API to operate the Flashlight LED.

Less Fancy but More Useful and Clutter free Interface

Screenshot when OFF

Screenshot when ON

I made the toggle button to cover the entire screen so that you need not search for the button and instead just click anywhere on the screen to either turn ON or OFF. I hardly used any fancy animations or images in the UI. This makes it lightweight and probably faster too. A brighter screen consumes a lot more power than a darker one. So, I have purposefully kept most part of the screen dark to save battery power. The borders toggle between black and white indicating the LED status.

No Unwanted Features, No Ads of any kind and works Well

I see many flashlight apps coming with too many unwanted features which are sometimes not even relevant to the app. Some of them are very heavyweight with all the unwanted junk. I tried to keep the functionality focused on just operating the flashlight well when you need. I found many Flashlight apps turn OFF after screen timeout. I tried to prevent that. It has no ads or other stuff that may annoy you. It just works. I like the Linux philosophy of do one thing and do it well. It does not run any background services so it does not affect your phone when you are not using the app. It is safe to install.

Free and Open Source

Feel free to use the app and I encourage you to play with the code if you have any knowledge of it or if you want to learn. I will try to document the code well so that if you are a beginner, you can use the source code to learn making android apps. It is a very simple program so I think works as a good hello world project for Android. I will be really happy if you can make it better and share the code with me. Grab the Sane Flashlight source code on GitHub...

Conclusion

It just took a couple of hours to make the first version of this app so I made it instead of searching for a better one from the thousands of apps in the play store. I have published it hoping that it will help you too. Try it and I will be glad to receive suggestions and feedback from you. You may download it from the Google Play Store.

I have come to United States an year ago to pursue my masters. In the beginning days, I had no mobile, no laptop and no similar gadget with me. It was hard to communicate and roam around without these things. But I have learned many things which can help you when you travel to United States. There are many mobile apps and online services which can help you in your transition and later too. Here we go:

It is better to get a either a smartphone (I prefer Android and make sure it works in USA), a laptop or tablet when you come to USA. Otherwise buy one after you arrive. Most of these apps or services are recommended assuming that you have an easy access to internet and Wi-Fi connection.

Communication

1. Google Voice [PC/ Linux, Mac, Android]

   If you have a personal laptop or a PC, you can use Google Voice to make phone calls and SMS across the United States for free. There is also an Android app, but it works only if you have a mobile service. I mean to say that the Google Voice Android app does not work if you do not have a SIM card, but you can make calls from your computer/ laptop from Gmail. You can add a few bucks to your Google Voice account and use it for cheap international calling.

2. UppTalk [Android]

   There are many free calling apps for Android in the United States. I have tried many of them, but felt this was better than the flock. If you have a mobile device and do not have a SIM card or mobile service yet, this can come to your rescue. You will be assigned a number and you can call anyone in the US and receive calls for free. You just need WiFi connectivity for this to work.
   

3. call2friends.com [Web with flash plugin]

   This website provides limited free calling to many countries. It provides free calling to India for a minute per day and for United States for about 3 minutes (at the time of writing this post). Although this does not sound a good alternative, it helps sometimes. I was using this to call my parents in India and ask them to come online on Skype. I used to use Google voice from my laptop for calling from the United States and used this website to notify my family or friends to appear online. 

4. Facebook Messenger [Android, iOS, web]

   Not yet popular, but Facebook messenger has recently added a feature to make voice calls. This is an awesome feature and can help you, call your friends anywhere in the world and that too without having a mobile number. However, to make a call the person on the other side should also have this app installed. The good thing is that most of the people in US have a smart phone, WiFi connection and this app installed. We may not have phone numbers of all our friends, but we have most of our friends on Facebook which makes this app very useful at times.

5. Calling Cards

   There are many proxy calling services using which you can make cheap international calls. I hardly use these services as I go with Google Voice but most of my friends do. Most of my friends use indiald.com, telcan.com and other similar services to make cheap calls to India. You can give them a try if needed.

Finding Accomodation

There are many services which can help you find vacant houses around you. Here are the ones which I felt can help you out.

1. Zillow.com

   This is an excellent app to find houses around you. It has both a web version and an Android app. The Android app can find houses round you based on your location. It marks vacant houses on a map and we can also search by distance from your location. But this app may not show all the vacant houses around. Its database was not that good at the time I used it.

2. Trulia.com

   This is similar to Zillow. I hardly used this app, but many people and tech blogs recommend this. Also, it has better ratings on Google Play and seems to be more popular than Zillow. There can be many other houses not listed on these apps, so it is always a good idea to check by visiting local real estate agents.

Split Expenses

1. Splitwise.com

   Most students and employees plan to live in a shared apartment after arriving in the US, at-least in the first few months unless you are rich enough. If you are sharing an apartment with your friends, you may have to split expenses among your roommates. This app does exactly that and simplifies a few complex calculations and saves a lot of time.

2. SplitEasy

   SplitWise is a good service, but we had a bad experience with it. A few entries got modified or, deleted without our intervention. Mistakes in financial matters is not always a tolerable issue, so we planned to make a software of our own. I started coding it on a fine weekend in Python and we have replaced SplitWise with this for our in-house purposes. This uses entries from an excel sheet and does the calculations. I don't recommend you use it in the present state (at the time of writing this post) as it is not well documented and doesn't have a pretty interface. I will post it on my blog at all if I document it and make it user friendly.

Other

1. Explore around you with Google Maps

   You can use the Google Maps Android app to easily find places around you like restaurants, gas stations, parks, offices, etc. In the current interface, if you click on the user icon on the right-top corner, you will be shown places around you in categories. You can also find user ratings to all the places. That's a very helpful feature if you are new to that place. I recently went to Seattle on a vacation to my sister's house and this app helped me a lot. Every day in the evening, I used to open this app and plan for my next days' trip. I've enjoyed a lot in this vacation and thanks to Google Maps.

2. Did I miss Anything?

   I have listed apps and services that I have used and felt are also be helpful to you. But that does not mean I am aware of all the wonderful apps and services. Let me and other readers know if you know any other good apps or services. That would be very helpful.

Most of these apps may work for you everywhere independent of the location, but a few of them are relevant only for the United States. Some of my friends are coming to the USA to pursue their higher education and a few are coming on some job and some of you can be tourists. Whosoever you are, I hope this post helps.

Are you a geeky Linux user who works with the Terminal very often? Then this tip is for you. Sometimes when we use the terminal quite frequently along with the other programs, it is not always convenient to launch the terminal or focus the terminal window always. So, is'nt it good if we have a terminal appear and disappear with just a key press?
Did you guess <ctrl>+<alt>+T  ??? No. It just launches a new terminal window every time we use it. But that is not what we usually want and here is an application that does just what we want.

Dropbox, the most popular file syncing and sharing service is about to put an end to Public Folders shortly.