Audials Light Is A Stunning, Skinnable Media Center With Radio, Music TV Streaming & More

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Radio apps are available in all shapes and sizes on all major desktop and mobile platforms including Windows, OS X, Android, iOS and Windows Phone.  If you have been on the hunt for one that also lets you listen to podcasts and the music stored on your hard drive, try Audials Light. On the surface, it looks just like any other radio app that allows streaming a plethora of online stations, but deep down, you will find some really great features in addition to just that. For instance, it allows you to stream music TV channels, find and subscribe podcasts, search and stream music of your favorite artists, access your local music library and on top of that, it bundles it all in a great-looking UI. Read More

Fruumo Gives Chrome A Gorgeous New Tab Page With RSS Feeds, Clock & Weather

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By default, Chrome can be set to open the New Tab page, one or more preset pages, or your last open tabs each time you launch the browser. At best, the new tab page will let you revisit the pages you recently closed, in addition to letting you access your Chrome apps. While providing these features isn't counterproductive, some users might want more from the new tab page. As several extensions cleverly demonstrate, the new tab page can provide you with extra information, while keeping its basic features around.  New Tab Page is an extension we reviewed earlier that’s an excellent example of just some of the ways this page can be made more useful. Fruumo is yet another Chrome extension that modifies the new tab page so that you can see what date & time it is, view the weather info for the day, follow RSS feeds, and manage your apps. Read More

Create Colorful Comic Strips & Collages On iPad With Halftone 2

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You wouldn’t necessarily use an app like PhotoComic to edit all your photos on an iDevice, but on the other hand, where’s the fun in using feature-rich photo editors like Touch Image Manipulator? Apps available for iPad are usually this way; they either have so many features that using them becomes nightmarishly complicated, or there are not enough features to serve users in all situations. Maybe that’s why the developers behind Halftone 2 have attempted to strike the perfect balance between simplicity and features in this release. The Halftone photo editor was released for iPhone quite some time ago, but the new Halftone 2 is iPad-exclusive and quite different from its predecessor. It has been designed to get fun-looking results, but comes with some pretty serious features and Aviary's image editor. You can use the app to create comics and collages, or just do some casual editing on your photos. Read More

Bamboo Loop Combines Collaborative Drawing & Picture Messaging On iOS

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Draw Something has enjoyed a lot of fame on iOS, and many people are still using it to laugh at the sketching skills of their friends. I play the game quite regularly, and there are times when a given drawing becomes more about getting a message across rather than winning a point. When you stop and think about it, a photo can convey a lot more than a paragraph of text (or as the saying goes, equal to a thousand words). With modern messengers, you can send photos as attachments with your messages, and one or two options are available for fans of doodling as well. Released by Wacom - the popular maker of styluses and graphics tablets - the new Bamboo Loop might look like a photo editor at first glance, but it is actually a messaging app. You can doodle on your favorite photos or beautiful background textures, and send these end results to any of your friends. Your friends can then send your creation back to you by making changes and additions of their own, thereby creating a loop of interaction. Read More

GO Dev Team Enters The Android Web Browser Arena With Next Browser

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Even if you aren't much of an Android fan, you might still have heard the name GO, which has long been rocking the Android ecosystem. No, it’s not a phone or a tablet, nor a pair of stylish headphones. In the Android world, the name GO is associated with a feature-laden launcher, a beautiful weather app, an exceptionally great SMS app, and loads of other great tools that are created by the super-talented GO Dev Team. Keeping their tradition, the folks behind the ever-popular GO Launcher have released a fascinating new app called Next Browser for Android. If you’re wondering why’d you need yet another browser when the likes of Opera, Chrome and Dolphin are already available for the platform, then we must tell you that Next Browser has what it takes to be in the same league as these names, packing in a plethora of features such as speed dial, an awesome Next View feature to find and explore interesting content, voice search, browser extensions support, bookmarks synchronization and more. Read More

Design Print-Ready Sheets Of Single Or Multiple Images With Primg

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The better, more convenient way to print images, especially if you have a lot of them queued up, is to use a print utility, preferably one that’s designed specifically for handling pictures. Primg is a lightweight application developed with this very purpose in mind, and uses three modes to cater to different formatting needs: printing thumbnail grids of all pictures in a selected folder, one image per page, or several copies of a picture per page. What’s more, all major image formats including BMP, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIFF, and a plethora of Susie formats are supported. Read More

Control GIF Animation Playback & Export Frames As JPG Images With 7GIF

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How do you pronounce GIF? Is it like the popular peanut butter brand Jif, or more like the 'gif' in gifted? The debate regarding the format’s true pronunciation has been in the limelight for a while now, but we all now have the answer as the creator of the format, Steve Wilhite, denounced the 'gif' as in 'gifted' pronunciation pretty strongly last week. Whichever way you like saying it is entirely a different story, but the use of animated GIFs goes back to as far as the early days of the world wide web. The format is pretty popular on internet forums for sharing funny pictures related to celebrities, tech companies, cats & dogs, and a lot more. We've covered plenty of applications for Windows that let you view (or in some cases tweak or create) GIF files, such as GIFCam, GIF Resizer and GiftedMotion, just to name a few. 7GIF is another tiny Windows app that allows you to view GIF files and control their playback speed. Read More

Glide Allows Easy Video Messaging With Live Broadcast On Android & iOS

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Messaging over mobile phone, or more precisely smartphones, has evolved beyond the simple texts that we used to send when Nokia was at the top of its game and everyone owned one of those indestructible yet ugly Handsets from the Finnish manufacturer.  Today, messages are mostly sent over the internet, and can be anything from simple texts to images, voice clips, or even small video clips. Glide - Video Walkie Talkie is a messaging app for Android and iOS that lets you send video messages, or broadcast your video live to friends (currently only supports Facebook). It’s something like a cross between Skype and an answering machine. You can chat with one or several friends at once, and also leave messages for those who are offline. To send and receive messages, both the sender and recipient(s) must have the app installed. Read More

Shazam Comes To iPad With Auto Background Tagging & Interactive Maps

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Back in December, the famous music recognition app Shazam was updated with support for offline tagging, which seemed like a pretty revolutionary feature. Looking back, however, you have to admit that Shazam needs support for more platforms before it goes about adding novelty features to the mix. It was quite heartening to see Shazam arriving on Windows 8, but the owners of iPad continued feeling a bit ignored. Of course, the app has been around on iOS for a long time, but wasn’t display-optimized for the tablet. After taking a look at the new universal version of the app, we can safely say that the wait has been totally worthwhile. Not only does the iPad version of Shazam come with a gorgeous interface, it also debuts some features that will only arrive later on other devices. These include continuous scanning of your surroundings for new music even when the app is in the background, and a prominent place for popular tags from different TV shows. Shazam now also has an ‘Explore’ view, where users get to see trending tags belonging to a particular city or country. Read More

PC & Mac Remote Control App Splashtop 2 Comes To Windows Phone 8

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When it comes to apps that let smartphone users access their desktops remotely, Splashtop is sure to be among the first names that crop up. Splashtop became available for iOS quite a while back, and the Android app wasn’t too far behind. After some time though, the company behind the awesome remote access software decided to revamp it and came up with Splashtop 2. The new app became popular for its better streaming quality, and audio support. However, Windows Phone users could only watch in jealousy as their friends on other platforms went around using Splashtop 2 for playing PC games on their smartphones. Finally though, the situation has suddenly changed for the better. Despite the fact that the WP Store did not have the original Splashtop app, it has directly received Splashtop 2! The app isn't too different from its Android and iOS counterparts, but does have a few features designed exclusively for Windows 8 and WP8. Read More

How To Set Reminders For Notes In Evernote On OS X, iOS & Web

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It’s hard to find any shortcoming with Evernote, both as a service and with any of its apps. It’s rich in features and since it’s available on so many platforms, you can create and sync notes from just about anywhere. Though hard to spot, one shortcoming that Evernote did have was the lack of reminders for the notes users created and with a recent update to both its desktop and mobile apps, that has been fixed as well. If you use Evernote on a Mac or an iOS device, or its web clipper in your browser, you can now set reminders for your notes. Users can receive emails for the reminders they've set, as well as Notification Center alerts on both OS X and iOS. Sadly, the Windows and Android apps have been left out. Not only are Windows users unable to set reminders, it seems they will not be able to view the ones set from a Mac or an iOS device either. Here's how you can set up Evernote to give you reminders on your device or as emails. Read More

Browse & Post To Social Media From Major Email Services With PowerInbox

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There's no doubting the importance of social media these days, but it can be an extreme distraction for many of us, keeping us from being productive by switching to those Facebook and Twitter tabs all the time. For many of us, the mailbox is where we spend a significant time of the day while at work, and apps like Mailbox and services like Mailstrom are some of our favorite ways for dealing with email when it starts to become too overwhelming. Though wouldn't it be nice if you could also keep an eye on your social media accounts right form your inbox, without having to switch to their tabs? PowerInbox is an extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer that integrates with Gmail, Hotmail/Outlook, and Yahoo! Mail, and lets you add apps for services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more to it. PowerInbox adds a sidebar to your email inbox and shows you your feeds for each of the services you've added directly there. It also allows you to see icons for emails sent by services it recognizes. Read More

Popular To-Do List & Email App Mailbox Now Optimized For iPad

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Mailbox is arguably this year’s most popular third-party email app for iPhone and iPod touch, and it has now finally been optimized for use on the iPad. Feature-wise, things in the latest version i.e. 1.3 remain largely unchanged vis-à-vis the original release in February. This means you are still limited to using Gmail accounts, cannot set separate signatures for separate accounts, and will only have portrait orientation to use the the app in. Let's check it out in more detail after the jump! Read More

Kakudo Brings iPad-Like Quick App Switching Gestures To Android

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The way Android handles multitasking is simply phenomenal. You can easily switch back and forth between apps, thanks to the ‘Recent Apps’ feature introduced in Ice Cream Sandwich. Although I won’t cite it as true-multitasking like that in Windows or OS X, it still outdoes iOS and Windows Phone 7. However, I feel like there’s a lot of room to improve, as one has to continuously tap the recent apps button (or long press a key on some devices like the Galaxy S series) to switch between the apps. XDA member Acela1230 has come up with a surprisingly useful app called Kakudo, which makes switching apps (and as a matter of fact, multitasking itself) tenfold easier. The application uses an iPad-esque multitasking function that lets you use left and right swipe gestures to switch between running apps. Lets take a quick look. Read More

Mark Webpages As Read, Reading Or Read Later & Add Notes To Them In Chrome

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Did it ever happen to you that you were surfing the net and came across an interesting piece, but vaguely felt you’d read it before? Perhaps you really did, but can’t recall when. If you’d like to be sure you have (or haven’t) read a certain webpage before, try Chrome’s helpful little Mark As Read extension. You can mark any online content as ‘Read’, ‘Reading’ or ‘Read later’ so that upon returning to it later, you recognize it instantly as such. You can also unmark its current status or switch it to a different one. If the world wide web is your book, this neat extension  conveniently serves as a bookmark, market and highlighter for your unread, read and to-read sections. Read More

Get Gestures For Quick Calls, Texts & Emails From iPhone Contacts App

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Thanks to its support for iCloud, Gmail, Hotmail and other similar services, the contact management in iOS is pretty good. You don’t have to worry too much about importing contacts to your iPhone manually, and the stock Phone app integrates the address book quite nicely as well. There are a few things, however, that might entice some users to shift to third-party contact managers for iOS. ReachFast Contacts is a pretty decent example of an app that offers something that is unavailable in iOS by default: gesture control. Admittedly, it only takes a few extra taps to make a call from the stock Contacts or Phone app, but if you have access to the Cydia store, it is now possible to have the best of both worlds. QuickGestures lets you make calls, send a text or start composing an email right from the stock Contacts app simply by performing different gestures on each contact’s name - no extra buttons added! Read More

Drive Awake For iPhone Scans Your Eyes & Prevents Drowsiness Behind The Wheel

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There can be no denying the importance of navigation apps for smartphone users, since they let them reach their destination quickly. Having said that, there is an even more important objective that you must always remember while driving, and that is to reach your destination alive and in one piece. Drunk driving, texting while driving and falling asleep on the road are among the biggest causes of automobile accidents. Of course, being sensible is always the best precaution you can take against these problems, but technology can also help you to some extent. Meet Drive Awake, an iPhone app that scans your eyes while you are driving, and literally raises the alarm as soon as your eyes start closing. Since Drive Awake has been developed in collaboration with Café Amazon, and points you to its nearest outlet whenever you are caught napping. Read More

Manage Notifications For Each iPhone App From Home Screen With Badger

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Some Cydia tweaks end up being bit disappointing after a lot of hype has been created around them, but Velox did not prove to be such a flop. People were talking about it well before its release and now that it has been available in the jailbreak store for a few weeks, the large number of available Velox add-ons are a testament to its growing popularity. While most people have been focusing on its ability to display interactive widgets on the iPhone SpringBoard, there is something else the tweak can do: letting you view and dismiss notifications for any app simply by performing a few gestures on the app’s icon. If you like this feature but don’t want all the extra (albeit awesome) baggage that comes with Velox, Badger might be worth a shot. This tweak is a notification manager that offers a ton of customization options, and can work with any app that has pending notifications. It’s like having a separate Notification Center for each app. Read More

Google Drive For Android Gets Card UI, OCR, Selective Offline Sync & More

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Google Drive is one of the services that didn’t make it to the headlines at Google I/O a few days back, and no noteworthy update to the service was expected either. What we do have now, is an update for the Google Drive Android app, a massive one. There are new features, a new interface, and bug fixes. When you update the app, the first thing you will notice is he interface that is now cleaner and easier to scroll, gives you a grid like view, and follows the card-based UI that users love from Google Now. Feature wise, the app can now connect with your camera to snap documents, and convert them to searchable PDF files using OCR. File editors now allow you to view a file’s properties, fonts & cell highlights can be edited for spreadsheets, and files can be made available offline. Read More