10 Reasons Why You want to take a nap

There is no better energy than we get to sleep after a good sleep.However, there are many advantages that come included in short naps. Recent research has shown that short naps will provide energy to the body and mind, something JFK, Churchill, and Edison were fond of them in the middle of their respective efforts.

1. Increased productivity

Progressive companies like Zappos, Nike and Google have designated nap rooms for employees. In Japan, the law requires workers to rest after lunch. Why? because several studies have repeatedly shown that naps improve productivity. Today, people tend to work longer hours than ever and are increasingly "burned". An afternoon nap is like an energy boost. If you work a regular 9-5 shift, it is best to avoid taking a nap, as this can affect your nighttime sleep. Experts recommend 10-30 minutes a nap in the middle of the day.

2. A boost of energy without stimulants

Most people tend to have a cup of coffee or an energy drink with sugar when they are a little low energy, but caffeine and sugar can increase the short term. This can cause you to be less productive and feel more tired at the end of the day. These temporary solutions give you energy but can also wreak havoc on your health, especially energy drinks that put pressure on your heart, as you dehydrate. Thus, nap gives you a much healthier to inject a touch of energy to your day option.

3. The clarity of thought

Research on short sleep cycles suggest that a nap is beneficial to your cognitive functions. During sleep, the brain makes a "cleansing", where classified data and consolidates memories. After waking up, your mind will be less confused and your thoughts will be more organized.

4. Increase alertness

Everyone who works during the day should be familiar with depression afternoon. Naturally, people experience a drop in their life energy 8 hours after awakening, usually between 2 and 4 pm. Research suggests that taking a nap after lunch can give you a jolt and avoid this.

5. Security

A healthy person requires seven to eight hours of sleep per day, but many people sleep 6 or less, so it is very likely to be in a bad mood and make mistakes. With less than 6 hours of sleep, the risk of traffic accidents and labor triples. A nap can improve your energy, increase your concentration and reduce those risks.

6. Improve Memory

Napping is especially good for learning and memory retention. Several studies have found that students who took naps before exams scored higher on their tests. The reason? During sleep, the hippocampus, the part of the brain that strengthens our short - term memory, use the time to transfer information to long -term memory, making sure they do not forget what you've learned.

7. Elevated mood

In short, the dream is a relaxing activity, and may have similar effects on your mood to those produced by physical activity. A short nap does not replace a full night 's rest, but certainly can reinforce a bad mood and reduce stress caused by sleepiness. Even if you've had a good sleep, nap not leave you groggy because of the short period of time asleep.

8. More creativity

Creativity comes in different forms, and though it may seem, some tasks require a lot of creativity. A good nap will allow your brain to process information well, so waking you be able to creatively combine the ideas.

9. Less stress

Naps also work to counteract the negative effects of stress , and daily anxiety. The researchers found that the relaxing breathing during sleep do relaxes tension in the back and shoulders, and lowers blood pressure. Some people find that they are unable to take a nap at work, but they can do with meditation. Although not as powerful as a nap, meditation produces, similar to those produced during sleep, slower brain waves which reduces stress and clears the mind.

10. Better health

Nap affects your overall health. Researchers have found that those who duerneb regularly in the evenings have a lower risk of developing heart disease and depressed. Naps also help the body process carbohydrates and balance hormone levels.

Therefore, remember to take a daily nap of 30 to enjoy its amazing benefits ...

Amazing Health Tips

How to Get More Space for Photos on Your iPhone

Written by Nancy MessiehMay 30, 2016

Between music, podcasts, photos, videos, and apps, you can run out of space on your iPhone pretty fast. Thankfully, the free iOS app IceCream helps solve one of those problems by giving you more space for the photos on your phone.

To use IceCream, you will have to sign up for a free account. They also suggest providing your phone number for two-step verification. If you want your photos to be geotagged, the app will also ask you to share your location info.

Once you’ve finished the brief set-up, the app will tell you how much space photos are taking up on your phone. If you hit the big blue “Free Up iPhone Space” button, you can choose just how much space you want to free up — from 50 MB to 1 GB worth of photos.

IceCream caps out at 5,000 photos or 1 GB of photos, whichever is less.

Choose how many photos you want to backup, and the original resolution photos will be saved to the cloud. The app doesn’t delete them from your phone, but rather compresses them to 90% of their original size, freeing up tons of space on your phone.

You can then access your photos from IceCream’s web interface and download all the photos to your computer as a ZIP file.

Deleting Files From IceCream

One thing that IceCream doesn’t make easy is to figure out how to your photos from the cloud. There doesn’t appear to be a way to delete them from the web interface.

In the app, go to the Photos tab using the menu at the bottom of the screen, navigate to the Cloud tab, and select which images you want to delete. For some reason, this method didn’t always work for us, but you can also delete photos one by one by opening them up.

Before you completely delete photos from your phone, it would also be best to download the backup to your computer if you want to hang on to them. If you delete the compressed versions from your phone, this should simultaneously deletethe original resolution copy from the cloud.

We did find that deleted photos still showed up in the web interface several hours later, but not in the app.

There’s a certain level of trust you have to have to use a service like IceCream. But if you’re worried about losing your photos, as is the case with any cloud storage service, you should also consider backing up the files to your computer or a hard drive.

And while IceCream is free for now, it won’t stay that way. According to TechCrunch, once they start charging, it will cost $0.99 per 1,000 photos, but it’s not clear when the switch to a paid model will begin.

Source: www.makeuseof.com

How to Find Lost Files on Mac OS X

Written by Dann AlbrightMay 30, 2016

We’ve all been there: you finish working on a document, save it, close the window, and… which folder did you save it in? Where’d it go?

Maybe you downloaded a file and it disappeared, or you might need a file that you worked on months ago but have no idea where you might’ve saved it. Regardless of which file you’ve lost, there are a number of things you can do to find it.

Spotlight Search

If you want to find a file fast, Spotlight is the way to go. Hit cmd + space to bring up the Spotlight search bar, type in what you’re looking for, and you’ll see a list of results from your computer and the web, broken down by type. Use your arrow keys or mouse to select one of the results, and you’ll have your file.

You can also scroll all the way down to the bottom of the results list and select Show all in Finder… to see the results in a Finder window, which gives you a bit more room to work with.

Spotlight can handle boolean operators and other search attributes, like filetypes and modified or created dates, though you’ll have to know the right syntax. We covered a bunch of useful information in our Top Spotlight Tips article, so check that out if you want to learn how to maximize the utility of one of the most powerful features of OS X.

One of the biggest advantages of Spotlight is that it can search within some apps, too. For example, when I search for “marathon” here, a couple notes from Evernote show up at the top of the results list:

This works for email as well as anything sent with the Messages app, too, which is great if you’re trying to remember a conversation that you had with someone.

Finder Search

The easiest and for many the most familiar method of searching your Mac is with Finder. Just open it up, type what you’re looking for in the search bar in the upper-right-hand corner, and hit Enter.

You’ll see a list of results displayed, and hopefully your file is the first one listed (as we all know, though, it almost certainly won’t be, as that would be too easy). Finder searches the names of files as well as the contents of those files to create the search results. For example, in this search, I’m looking for the word “collection,” but the first 11 results don’t have “collection” in the title — it is, however, in the text.

If you want to search specifically for a filename, you’ll need to select Name matches: when it appears under the search bar. If you’ve already run your search, just add a space to the end of the search term, and it’ll show up.

To filter by file type, last opened date, last modified date, created date, or a wide range of other things (from the number of audio channels to the state or province according to the provider), hit the + button next to Save and use the dropdowns to narrow your search.

And if you want to only search the folder you’re in, just select “[folder name]” where it says Search: (in the images above, it says “Documents”).

Smart Folders

Finder also has another very useful feature for finding lost things called smart folders, which are basically saved searches that can be very specific. For example, you can create a smart folder that contains everything that’s been opened within the past three days, like this one:

You could create one that includes all of the audio files on your computer, or one that stores PDFs that have been modified within the past four days. You can be as specific as you want: if it would be useful for you to always have access to documents that contain the word “technology” in the title, were created within the past month, and opened within the past day, you could do that:

To get started, go to File > New Smart Folder. You’ll see a Finder window where you can enter your search criteria (be sure to hit the + button when you want to add another criterion). Get all of the criteria set up, and then click Save. You’ll be asked if you want to keep a shortcut to this folder in your sidebar, which is probably a good idea, because if you don’t, you’ll need to go to Library > Saved Searchesto find it.

You can also save any search that you’ve run in Finder as a smart folder by clicking the Save button once you’ve run the search. And after you have it set up, the contents of the folder will automatically be updated to fit the criteria you set when you created it.

Use Third-Party Search Apps

The built-in search on OS X is really good, and it’ll help you find what you’re looking for almost every time. But if you need a little more power, you can use a third-party app to look for your files. On my own computer, I use EasyFind, a free app available in the App Store.

The biggest benefits to using EasyFind are that it searches hidden files and the contents of packages, which Finder doesn’t do, and that it’s very fast without needing to index the files on my computer. It also supports extended boolean operators, which is nice if you want to look for something really specific.

We’ve talked about Alfred a few times before on MakeUseOf, and in addition to all of the other great things it can do, it’s really good at finding things. Found, Find Any File, and Quicksilver, another MakeUseOf favorite, are other good options.

The Terminal

Since Spotlight’s release, Terminal hasn’t been a go-to tool for searching your computer, but if you like to do other things from Terminal, you may want to know the commands for searching from it, as well. Probably the best command to use is mdfind, which searches the metadata and contents for your search term (it’s basically the terminal command for a Spotlight search).

You can also use useful tags like -live, which will give you live updates on the number of matches to your search, and -onlyin, which lets you specify a directory. If you want to see all of the other commands you can use to power up mdfind, check out the manual page.

Most people probably won’t ever need to use Terminal, but if you’re already using it for something, this can be a good way to make it even more powerful.

Go Forth and Find

It’s easy to lose files on your Mac, but when you have these strategies at your disposal, it should be easy to find them, too. Whether you use built-in, quick tools like Spotlight, third-party apps like EasyFind, or automated solutions like smart folders, you’ll spend less time searching and more time doing.

How do you find lost files on your Mac? Share your best tips in the comments below!

Source: www.makeuseof.com

Twitter Goes Beyond 140 Characters, But It’s Not All Good News

Written by Mihir PatkarMay 27, 2016

From the time it was first conceived, Twitter has limited messages to 140 characters. That included anything you type, from other user’s handles to the # of a hashtag. But all that is about to change soon.

Twitter has officially announced that it will rethink what it counts in those 140 characters. “In the coming months we’ll make changes to simplify Tweets including what counts toward your 140 characters, so for instance, @names in replies and media attachments (like photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) will no longer ‘use up’ valuable characters,” the company said.

The updates will roll out to all users over the next few months, but if you know what they’re all about, you won’t want to wait!

Let’s Start With the Good News

If you’ve been trying to go beyond 140 characters, the first few changes will bring a smile to your face. Finally, usernames, quotes, and media attachments don’t count in the character limit!

Change 1: Right now, when you attach a video to your tweet (or any other multimedia like images, GIFs, or Twitter polls), it generates a link that counts towards the limit. In the new rules, these attachments won’t take up any of your precious 140 characters.

Change 2: Where you’ll feel the effect most is with replies. For example, take this conversation between me and my colleagues, Harry, Matthew, and Justin. I had to write, edit, and re-edit what I wanted to say to fit in everyone’s “@” handles, so that they are notified I’m talking to them.

But in the new system, because I’m replying to Harry who started the conversation, those @names won’t be counted in the 140-character limit.

Change 3: A short while ago, Twitter introduced Quote Tweets. In a nutshell, this lets you retweet someone’s update and add your own commentary to it. But again, the quoted tweet is turned into a link, much like the attachments above, which counts in your limit. And yes, you guessed it, the new rules will stop counting that.

The Feature You Should Be Excited About

In the near future, you will be able to retweet your own tweets—something which you can’t do at the moment. So while you can track your most-retweeted tweet, you can’t share it again without typing it all over.

It’s a welcome change, since your current options seem a little bit like you’re spamming your timeline. For example, sometimes you have an important tweet that you want to keep reminding others about, possibly to keep all the information and replies localized in one tweet. In such a scenario, it’ll be better to retweet yourself than have multiple tweets.

And then there’s the trick of replying to yourself and removing your handle, so that the tweets appear are a series. Instead, you could just quote yourself to make your point.

No matter how you look at it, this one move will change Twitter for the better. You’ll be able to write tweets that get more retweets, and figure out how to keep information on Twitter centralized instead of in a chain of scattered messages.

The One Bad Update

While most of the announced changes make sense, there’s one that doesn’t. Twitter is getting rid of the “.@” trick. Here’s what they have to say about it:

New Tweets that begin with a username will reach all your followers. (That means you’ll no longer have to use the “.@” convention, which people currently use to broadcast Tweets broadly.) If you want a reply to be seen by all your followers, you will be able to Retweet it to signal that you intend for it to be viewed more broadly.

For those who don’t know, the “.@” is one of the basic tricks of using Twitter. Right now, when you start a tweet with a username, it shows only on that user’s timeline. But when you add a dot before the “@”, it shows on all your followers’ timelines. Here’s a quick example:

In my opinion, removing the “.@” trick is a big mistake. Under the new guidelines, if Harry wants to start a conversation with Matt, I have to see that. You’d be surprised how many people on your Following list follow each other. Soon, this could mean your timeline being populated with a whole bunch of irrelevant tweets you would otherwise have missed.

Yes, it saves characters for you (remember, usernames won’t count), but if that comes at the cost of making the timeline more confusing and irrelevant, it’s not worth it. Instead, just educating users about Twitter pro tips would be a better approach.

Are You Excited About the New Twitter?

So no, none of these new changes let you write tweets longer than 140 characters, but that’s a good thing. There are enough tools to write longer posts, even Twitter-based ones Medium. Instead, with the new changes, Twitter is recognizing it is at its best when it retains brevity. The difference now is that you can still be brief without non-essential words and items limiting what you want to say.

What do you think about the upcoming Twitter changes? Do you agree that getting rid of the “.@” is a bad move?

Image Credit: Blue bird by Julien Tromeur via Shutterstock Source: www. makeuseof.com

Commuting is Stressful, But You Can Make it Better

Written by Dave LeClairMay 30, 2016

Ah, the old commute. Every day you hop in the car (or on the train, plane, hoverboard, or just your feet), and you make the journey to your place of work. For some, this journey lasts just a few minutes, but for others, the commute is a long part of the day. For these people, it can be a time of stress.

But let’s be honest, starting off the day in the most stressful way possible isn’t good. You end up getting to work in a bad mood, which makes it all but impossible to put your best foot forward. Fear not, though, because the infographic below will show you things you can do to make your ride to work a less stressful experience. Who knows, you might even learn to turn it into time of productivity.

Via AutoInsuranceCenter

Click To Enlarge

Google Makes the Best iPhone Keyboard

Did Google Make the Best iPhone Keyboard Yet? Meet Gboard

Written by Mihir PatkarMay 25, 2016

Android users often get some features that iOS users don’t have. For the longest time, this included keyboards not made by Apple, which meant constant jibes from Android fanboys about Apple’s restricted system.

But with iOS 8, Apple opened the flood-gates, which allowed users to install third-party keyboards on iPhones, like SwiftKey, Swype, and many others. Who would have thought this would one day let Apple turn the tables on their Android counterparts?

Google recently launched a new keyboard for iPhones called Gboard, and it’s exclusively available on iOS right now. That’s right, even Google’s own operating system doesn’t have it. The kicker? It’s probably the best mobile keyboard you have ever used.

What’s Gboard All About?

Gboard looks just like the default iPhone keyboard, and you might not even notice the difference except for that Google ‘G’ logo in the top-left corner. But that’s what makes this app so special.

Tap that G and it opens Google search in the keyboard itself. Type what you want to search for, get suggestions, and browse the results — all without ever leaving the keyboard space or changing the app to go to your browser. To put it another way, Gboard is a Google Search browser baked into your keyboard.

But you can’t actually browse the links. Instead, the link acts as something you can see or share. For example, let’s say you’re talking with a friend in Messages and want to share the address of a restaurant to meet up at. Tap the ‘G’ button, search for the restaurant, and tap its location from the results. Google will automatically insert a Google Maps Card or the text address of the place, depending on where you tap.

Gboard Solves Multi-Tasking on Phones

In many ways, Gboard is the answer to the restrictions of a small screen and a virtual keyboard. That combination forces you to multi-task and switch between apps more than you’d like, which is what Gboard is trying to remedy.

Think about it: When you’re using a computer, switching between different tabs or apps isn’t a big deal. A quick Alt+Tab or Cmd+Tab will put you in Chrome, where you can search for what you want, copy the link, and go back. It happens in a matter of seconds.

On a mobile screen, things are different. You are switching from full-screen app to full-screen app through multiple taps or gestures. Then you start typing. Then you get results, but you can’t really right click and copy the link location. So you open the link, and then you copy the address. And if you need to copy text, it’s even worse, with that long press followed by adjusting the two tiny cursors till you get the selection of text just right. Ugh.

Multitasking is getting better, but it’s still a long way away from perfection. Till then, Gboard eliminates all those steps. It is reducing how much you multi-task on an iPhone, and this makes your life easier.

How Is Gboard As a Standalone Keyboard?

Searching links and auto-pasting text is awesome, but that isn’t the only thing that makes a keyboard great. You’re going to use the Google search feature, but you’ll be using it as a regular keyboard more often. So how does Gboard perform as a keyboard?

• Performance: I had no complaints with Gboard. The autocorrect is as good as the default iPhone keyboard, the long-press shortcuts for the special characters are in the same place or intuitive enough, and it doesn’t slow down.
• Swipe: Gboard, much like Swiftkey and Swype, lets you swipe-to-type. What this means is that you can trace a word without lifting your finger, and Gboard will predict it correctly.
• GIFs and Emojis: A brilliant feature of Gboard is the built-in search for GIFs and Emojis. When you type a word like “happy”, Gboard will automatically suggest the emoji for it. Search for “happy” in the Google search and choose “GIF” in the tabs below to insert an image from the language of the Internet.

In Gboard’s settings, you can choose to enable or disable any of these features, or others too. For example, if you use profanity while typing, you’ll probably want to disable Block Offensive Words.

GBoard and Privacy

Understandably, the biggest concern with Gboard is privacy. Google already knows a lot about you, and with this keyboard app, it can log everything you type! That can be pretty scary.

Thankfully, as it stands right now, Gboard doesn’t seem too scary. The privacy implications, laid out clearly in the App Store, indicate it doesn’t read what you type in other apps, apart from remembering things for spellings.

“Gboard will remember words you type to help you with spelling or to predict searches you might be interested in, but this data is stored only on your device. This data is not accessible by Google or by any apps other than Gboard,” Google says.

In fact, you don’t even need to sign in to your Google account to use Gboard. You can also grant Gboard access to your contacts (a feature enabled in Settings), so that you can quickly share the details of anyone in your phone book.

Problems with Gboard

While it’s a wonderful keyboard app full of various likeable features, it isn’t perfect.

• No Speech-to-Text: If you are used to talking to your iPhone and seeing your words translated into text, you’ll be disappointed with Gboard. There is no speech-to-text option, unfortunately. This is completely Apple’s fault, since it restricts third-party keyboards from using the built-in dictation feature, but it’s sorely missing here.
• iPad version isn’t good: I tried out Gboard on a first-gen iPad Mini. To be honest, I can’t see this replacing the default iPad keyboard. Its layout seems like a “stretched” version of the iPhone keyboard, rather than custom-designed for an iPad. I imagine it gets worse on a larger iPad keyboard, but even based on the Mini, I can’t recommend it.

• Limited Languages: Right now, Gboard supports only English as the language you can use. Compared to most other third-party keyboards or even the default Apple keyboard, that is incredibly restricted. At a time when SwiftKey supports hybrid languages, this is a big miss. Hopefully Google will add more languages in the future, but at the moment, if multi-language support is important to you, skip this app.
• Only in USA: At the time of writing, Gboard is only available in the US App Store. That said, if you’re not in America and you want to try it out, there’s a simple hack to download apps from the US App Store.

Comparing Gboard to Others

The big question, of course, is should you download Gboard, and how does it compare to other iPhone keyboards?

There are already some excellent GIF keyboards for iOS. Plus, keyboards like Swiftkey are brilliant and make up for Gboard’s shortcomings on the iPad front. Even if you don’t want to use third-party keyboards, the default iPhone keyboard is solid.

That said, Gboard feels like a taste of the future. Integrating search functionality into a keyboard is incredibly smart, and makes you wonder “why hasn’t anyone else done this yet?” It feels like what all keyboards should be like. If you use an iPhone, you need to get this now. And don’t worry, Google is working on perfecting the iPad version too.

Download: Gboard for iOS (Free)

Why Is Google Favoring Apple?

In a post on Product Hunt, Google product manager Bri Connelly said the company is working on a version for Android phones already, along with a multi-lingual version. But releasing this first on iOS is a surprising move.

We already know Microsoft loves Apple and iOS, but is Google now realizing that the iPhone is too big to ignore? Will we see more Google launches on iOS before Android itself?

What do you think, and have you tried Gboard? Share all in the comments below!

Source: www.makeuseof.com