Access secret features in Android

There are some secret features in Google's Android operating system for mobile phones and tablets. They are sometimes called Easter Eggs because you have to hunt for them and find them.

Apparently there is a hidden jellybean screen saver in Android 4.2. This article here describes how you can get it by repeatedly tapping the Android version number in Settings, About.

It did nothing on my Google Nexus 7 running Android 4.2 though. I pressed it 20 times or more, but got nowhere. This may be specific to mobile phones because there's a comment on the above article from someone with a Google Nexus 10 that said they couldn't access it either.

I thought I would try tapping the build number instead, thinking that it may be different on my Nexus 7 and after a few taps it started to display a countdown message reporting that I was soon to become a developer. After a few more taps and I was a full blown Android developer.

The Developer menu appears in Settings and it provides access to a number of functions. To be honest, few of them are useful if you are not an Android developer, but it's interesting anyway. The Stay Awake option might be useful if you want your device to stay on and not blank the screen after a minute or two. There's an option to protect USB storage, and one to show CPU usage. The rest, well, I'll leave them for developers.

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33 percent of Windows users intend to buy a Mac

There are some fun quotes about statistics, such as "There are lies, damned lies and statistics," and "90% of all statistics are made up," (including that one). You can manipulate statistics to support any point of view you  like. There is always some statistic somewhere that you can quite. Examine the figures though and things aren't quite what they seem.

Here is an article: 33% of Windows users intend to buy a Mac or iPad instead of upgrading to Windows 8. The original source is an Avast! survey reported in USA Today.

It sounds like 33% of Windows users intend to buy an iPad or Mac instead of Windows 8. After all, that's what the headline says. But here is the original information:

Avast's poll of U.S. Windows users found 16% planned to purchase a new computer. While 68% indicated they would get one of the new Windows 8 models, 30% planned to buy an Apple iPad touch tablet, and 12%, an Apple Macintosh computer.

So only 16% of Windows users planned to buy a new computer and 30% of these planned to buy an iPad. That is 30% of the 16% that intend to buy a new computer, which is 4.8% of the total surveyed. Only 12% planned to buy a Mac, which is 12% of 16% or 1.92%.

Add them together and the headline should say: 6.72% of Windows users intend to buy a Mac or iPad instead of upgrading to Windows 8. Actually, I'm not sure about the word 'instead'. It's possible that people could upgrade to Windows 8 and buy an iPad. I have both for instance. It depends on how the survey questions were phrased.

An alternative headline would be: 94% of Windows users reject the iPad and Mac as an upgrade option. After all, only 16% are planning to buy new hardware and 68% of those are planning to buy a Windows 8 PC. The things you can do with statistics.

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Get the Bing Winter Wallpaper pack free

Some people stick with the default Windows wallpaper, icons, mouse pointers, screen saver and so on, but others like to customise their desktop. What sort of user are you? If you like giving your PC a brand new look then here is a great new theme from Microsoft - Bing Wallpaper and Screen Saver Pack: Winter. It works on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8.

Download the file then go to the Downloads folder and run DefaultPack.exe. You will be asked if you want to set your browser's home page and search provider to Bing. It's your choice. Clear the tick boxes if you don't want to change anything.

After installation you'll see a winter scene on the desktop. Bing has some fantastic photos and these themes are excellent. Right click the desktop afterwards and select Personalize. The theme is listed in the My Themes section and you can switch back to the standard theme at any time. Click Desktop Background to see the wallpaper settings. By default it changes once a day to a new photo, but you can  change the frequency if you want to swap photos more often.

Click Screen Saver if you want to change the screen saver settings, such as how long to wait before it kicks in. Use the Preview button to see what the screen saver will look like without having to wait.

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Mountain Lion Notification Center is broken

Notification Center in OS X Mountain Lion on the Apple Mac is a great idea: Whenever important events occur you are notified on the screen and messages are stored in the Notification Center, which slides in the from the right side of the screen. It works well for Apple services, but for anything else it is very temperamental and if the wind's blowing in the right direction and you cross your fingers, you may just see a notification, or perhaps not. It seems that Notification Center is broken.

When Mountain Lion was installed I added my Google Mail account to the Mail App, set up notifications for everything, went to the website and logged in so Safari stored the password and so on. The first day, possibly two, I can't remember now, Google Mail notifications appeared in the notifications panel. Since then there has been nothing. There are emails in the notification panel that are over 100 days old. They just seem stuck and there hasn't been an update for months.

Facebook integration was added to Mountain Lion after the launch as an update and this has also proved troublesome. There are currently two Facebook items in my notifications panel, one is four days old and the other is 10 days old. I don't think I've ever seen anything from Twitter in there.

I've deleted all the notifications in the panel (items were days, weeks or even moths old) and it is currently empty. Whether it will ever get anything new is anyone's guess. I'll just have to wait and see.

The one glimmer of hope is that Calendar notifications work fine.

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