Monthly Archives: May 2012

Proximity-Based Group Collaboration App Kibits Released For Android

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Kibits is a cross-platform group collaboration and socializing app for Android and iOS-powered devices. The app, having made its mark among iOS users, has just hit the Google Play Store. Using Kibits, users can easily and instantly create private conversation groups (called Kibits), and invite their friends or nearby users with whom they can share text messages, photos, videos, music files, URLs, locations, and notes etc over the internet. Whether it’s about indulging in private file-sharing activities with just your family members, or collaborating with your workforce that is scattered in various parts of the world, Kibits has you covered. There is no restriction on the number of different groups that can be created or joined, and for all the activities going on within each individual group, the app keeps you apprised through real-time notifications. Read More

LameXP – Audio Encoder: Powerful, Feature-Rich Audio Converter For Windows

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Although MP3 is one of the most widely used audio file formats, sometimes we need to convert audio files into other formats to enhance audio quality and reduce file size. The audio file formats, including MP3, AAC, MP4, FLAC, OGG, WAV etc, all offer a different audio quality and size combination, and it's up to the user to select which file format they are most attracted to. This is where audio converters and encoders jump in, providing an easy solution for users to convert between different audio file formats. LameXP – Audio Encoder is an open source application that lets you convert audio files between a wide range of audio formats. It basically provides a GUI for different audio encoders, and packs all supported encoders and audio CODECs in one installation package. You can quickly convert audio files in batch and set the output audio quality based on compression. However, advance users will also be pleased by the program, as there’s a separate Advanced Options tab sporting a number of different settings that can be tweaked to create the perfect output. More details inside. Read More

myManga: Manga Reader With Automatic Downloads For New Episodes

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The Anime and Manga art has a huge fan following. Popular manga series, such as Naruto, Bleach and One Piece have also been aired on TV, while some of them, like Death Note, are so popular that full length movies have been created based on the manga series. Just like some people like to watch movies and TV shows, manga series also has a very huge fan following, and a lot of people like to read their favorite comics on a regular basis. In the past, we have covered manga readers including CoView (reviewed here) and MComix (reviewed here), both of which require you to have the manga comic books to read them. There are a lot of sources on the internet that allow you to download manga comics, but if you are looking for an application that allows you to download as well as read manga comics, look no further than myManga. It is an open source application for Windows that allows you to download and read your favorite manga comics. myManga can automatically download the next available episode/ chapter as soon as you finish reading the chapter or episode. Keep reading to find out more about myManga. Read More

TalkTyper Lets You Talk To Your Browser For Speech-To-Text Conversion [Web]

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TalkTyper is an easy-to-use web application that allows free speech-to-text dictation right within your browser. The app provides speech recognition, making voice dictation available to you. It's doubly useful, as not only speaking faster than typing, but also because the tool serves well for accessibility scenarios, or when you lack a good keyboard (or a position to use it, anyway). All you have to do is click a button, speak, and your dictation will automatically be transcribed in a matter of seconds. TalkTyper supports a number of languages, including French, Spanish, Turkish and Arabic, making it even more useful and practical for people from various linguistic backgrounds. More details after the jump. Read More

Fotor For iPhone & Android: Massive Camera App With DSLR-Like Focus, HDR, Photo Effects & Collages

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It is quite an old (read: wrong) notion that photos taken from a smartphone camera can never be as good as the ones shot from even the cheapest standalone cameras. The camera quality of smartphones has evolved tremendously over last few years, with Nokia's latest PureView technology being testament to what you can achieve optically on a mobile device. However, although most stock cameras are rather restricted, smartphone cameras have a host of supporting apps to go with them, and these apps have the potential to make your photography seem absolutely professional. Since iOS sports the largest collection of apps among smartphone platforms, it is understandable that some of those apps are just about perfect for the camera in iPhone. Fotor is one such app that combines a photo-editor with a fully-featured alternative camera for iOS devices. Some of the features in Fotor (like post-shooting focus, the Anti-Ghost option and the HDR mode) are good enough to give whole apps a run for their money. Read on to learn about everything Fotor has on offer. Update: The Android version of the app has been released to the Google Play Store, and you can find its download link at the end of the post. Read More

TheFolderSpy: Monitor & Receive Email Notifications For Folder Changes

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You may know that Windows constantly changes, renames, modifies and removes certain files while you perform tasks using any User or System utility. It's certainly impossible to keep track of all the files that are being crearted, changed, deleted from the system. However, if you want to monitor the files for changes in a particular folder, check out the previously covered Folder Monitor (reviewed here), Directory Monitor (reviewed here) and Watch 4 Folder (reviewed here). File monitoring applications help users view the changes made to the specified set of files without having to manually check each file's property sheet. TheFolderSpy is a simple, yet powerful folder monitoring application that allows you to monitor multiple folders for changes, and notifies you whenever it detects changes in files' contents/attributes. Using the application, you can easily monitor files to check whether it's been renamed, modified or even deleted from a specified folder, or not. Apart from providing you with an on screen notification, it also allows you to automatically send information about the change to a user-specified email address. More on TheFolderSpy after the break. Read More

eHistory: Add Time-Based Search Filters To Chrome’s Default History Page

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Chrome is amazing as a web browser, but it’s default history page lacks some basic filtering features, which make things difficult especially when it comes to complex search queries. For instance, the page does not allow you to filter items by date or domain, and if you want to find a particular link that you visited in the past, then you have to scroll down the very lengthy history page. eHistory is a Google Chrome extension that customizes the default history page and adds advanced search features to it, which allow you to filter results by date, title, domain, text and more. The options become available when you click the Advanced button on the page. In addition to that, you will find three options for deleting items, including Delete selected, Delete all search results and Clear History options. Read More

toastr: Get Important Reminders via Custom Toast Notifications Upon Unlocking Your Android Device

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It’s amazing as to how a simple little mobile app can prove to be a lifesaver under various circumstances. Take toastr for instance. This extremely lightweight Android app lets users define a custom text message that will automatically show up as a toast notification for a set duration whenever you unlock your device. What this means is that you’ll never miss out an important reminder again in a hurry, since the message itself will always be right before your eyes each time you unlock your phone. Whether it’s an important task related to the mobile device itself, or just a routine matter that you want to be reminded of at frequent intervals, you can trust toastr to be your companion in any situation. Imagine the convenience of receiving the most important notifications right on your Android device’s homescreen without having to set up multiple alarms or resorting to various to-do managers. Details to follow. Read More

mp3DirectCut: Easily Record, Edit & Trim MP3, Create Audio Loops

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A while back, we covered MP3 Toolkit (reviewed here), a powerful MP3 audio editor supporting a plethora of features that one may require to edit any MP3 file.  Today, we will take a look into a similar application known as mp3DirectCut. It's an audio editor and recorder suite, designed to work with MP3 files. Although the program doesn’t look as sleek as MP3 Toolkit, it does contain a number of features to easily edit your MP3s. The application lets you play, trim, edit and record audio files, apply audio effects, create audio loops and so on. Despite being so feature-rich, the application is very light-weight and will not hog down your system resources while processing audio tracks. Let’s find out what the program is capable of. Read More

D7 For Android: Calendar-Based To-Do List Manager With Metro UI

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The Metro UI has amassed a lot of praise for its elegant and functional interface, and rightly so, for it surpasses most other smartphone OS when it comes to aesthetics. Although there are plenty of Android apps designed using elements of said UI, if you’re looking for a Metro-styled to-do list manager, look no further than D7. Dipped in pure Metro flavors, D7 brings several simple-to-use features to expedite your routine task management. Unlike most to-do list management apps, D7 employs a calendar interface to help you easily create new to-do tasks for relevant days. In addition, the app supports various swipe gestures to let you navigate to the required date/day on the calendar, and to let you mark tasks as done/complete. That’s not all; you can also change the app’s theme color according to your liking, and set custom images as the background for tiles of as many as three different days of the week. Read More

openAviToGif: Generate Animated GIF Images From AVI Videos

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Sharing funny GIF animations has been a popular internet trend for over a decade now. Head over to any (well, most) of the internet forums and websites, and you will see numerous comic GIF animations shared by many different folks. Creating GIF animations is a no rocket-science though, anyone with the right set of tools (and a little bit use of brain of course) can create one of their own. If you ever wondered how to create one of your own animated GIF image files, for let's say, to publish them on internet forums or other websites etc., then give openAviToGif a try. This open source program allows you to convert AVI videos into animated GIF sequences. Along with single file conversion, the utility also supports batch mode, allowing you to convert as many AVI files as you want in one go. You just need to grab both the application and the CODEC pack (which is also available on the developer’s page) to create GIF animations from your video (AVI) files. Read on to find out how the program works. Read More

MultiWall: Set A Different Wallpaper For Each Monitor Or Stretch One Across All

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Wallpapers Desktop customization is rather important for one to increase overall productivity. While working, a good wallpaper can have very pleasant and positive effect on you. The default Windows 7 wallpaper management for a multi monitor setup is a little different from Windows 8. For example, in Windows 7 when you set a wallpaper as desktop background, the same wallpaper is applied on both monitors and there is no option to set a different wallpaper for each display monitor, while Windows 8 lets you set a different wallpaper for each screen and span one wallpaper across multiple monitors. A while back, we covered an application for Windows named DisplayFusion, a multi-display desktop window manager that lets you adjust the Resolution, Refresh Rate and Color Depth of each monitor separately and set primary monitor, manage its position and change wallpapers for both monitors. Today, we have another application, called MultiWall that allows you to set an individual wallpaper for each monitor and stretch a single wallpaper across all connected monitors. Read on to find out more about MultiWall. Read More

Dropboxifier Syncs Game & App Data Between PCs Through Dropbox

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If you use Steam to play a Steam powered game, you must have an idea of how the Steam cloud works. It does not matter which computer you use to sign in to your account, all your data will be saved in the cloud and synced across all the configured computers, whenever you log in to your Steam account. It actually works just like Dropbox, doesn’t it? The major difference between the Dropbox and Steam cloud service is that Dropbox only syncs your files and folders between all configured devices, while Steam syncs the game data and enables the system to read and write data to the sync location. Dropboxifier is an open source application for Windows that lets you create a symbolic link in order to place the game and application data in your Dropbox storage, allowing you to directly save and access applications/games data without having to manually move the files to the Dropbox folder. It basically tricks applications into reading and writing data directly to the specified Dropbox folder. Other than Dropbox, Dropboxifier also works with other cloud storage services such as SkyDrive, Google Drive etc. Read past the jump for details. Read More

Mantano Reader: Feature-Rich Android ePub & PDF Reader With Support For Cloud Sync & Annotation

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Whether you’re a dedicated bookworm or occasionally find yourself in need to fetch some helpful material from various ePub and PDF documents, you’re likely to have, at least, one e-Reader installed on your mobile device. While the Google Play Store offers some pretty comprehensive options in this regard, there is still room for a product to impress readers with its own unique features. One such immensely useful eBook reader that brings several ePub and PDF-reading features to the table is Mantano Reader. Laced with plenty of conventional and relatively fresh eBook/PDF reading and annotating tools, Mantano Reader vows to enhance your reading experience on your Android device. The app sports a neatly-designed library that caters for your local and online eBook management needs. In addition, it features its own Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS) catalogs explorer, supports opening files protected by Adobe DRM, lets you sync data and preferences with the Mantano Cloud, and last, but not the least, brings arguably one of the most intuitive and well-crafted eBook reader interfaces to Android. Read More

Create Citation Notes & Save Them To Google Docs Spreadsheets [Chrome]

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Citable is an instant web clipper that easily lets you copy titles, URLs, author's name and other important information for your research sources. With it, you can also add notes, summaries, tags and additional reference information, which is then automatically saved in a spreadsheet in your associated Google Docs account. These notes enable you to keep track of all your references and allow collaboration with others online. Citable automatically saves website details, adding each note to a separate, numbered row in the spreadsheet, ensuring easier management and retrieval of all your research sources. With it, you can create, manage and organize notes/quotes with only a click or two. Moreover, you can print the notes or export them any time you want. Read More

Multi Clipboard Manager: Record Copied Items Under Different Categories

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Whenever you execute an application, the pertaining files and data of the application are loaded to the RAM for quick and seamless access. This in turn also decreases hard drive work load. Since RAM can store data on temporary basis, Windows uses this feature to store clipboard items. Although quite nifty and a big time saver, Windows native clipboard manager doesn't have the ability to hold more than one copied item at a time, and that's the reason why a lot of third party clipboard managers have been developed that extend the functionality of the Windows Clipboard, letting users save as many copied items in the database as they want. In the past, we have covered a lot of clipboard managers such as Ars Clip (reviewed here), Ethervane Echo (reviewed here) and ClipX (reviewed here). They all provide you with different clipboard functionalities, such as customizable hotkey support, organizing clipboard entries into different groups, saving images directly from the clipboard etc. Today, we came across yet another clipboard manager called Multi Clipboard Recorder. It is a portable tool for Windows that allows you to record clipboard entries under different user-specified categories. The application provides you with a tree-list to easily manage and use the clipboard items that belong to a specific category. Each category has collapsible/expandable controls to help you focus on the required type of clipboard entries. Read More

AnySend: Easily Share Data Between Android Devices Over WiFi

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From the makers of arguably one of the most popular cross-platform to-do list managers, Do It Tomorrow (read Android app review & web app review), comes a very nifty file-sharing Android app, called AnySend. Sporting an uncluttered interface and requiring minimal configuration, the app allows instant and wireless data transfer between two Android devices that are sharing the same Wi-Fi connection. File sharing via AnySend is done on a direct device-to-device basis instead of sending download links of shared content or resorting to FTP servers. When installed, the app automatically detects all other Android devices running AnySend, and lets you easily send files to the required device with just a few taps. The app supports running in the background, and alerts of any new incoming files via sound and status bar notifications, as well as vibrations. A feature that parts AnySend from other similar remote file-sharing apps is that it lets you specify a whitelist containing trusted users from whom your device will automatically receive shared files, without prompting you to select the appropriate action each and every time. Read More

Mixy.tv: Create Playlists Of Videos From Facebook, Twitter & Reddit [Web]

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If you like watching trending videos on social networks like Facebook, Twitter or Reddit, then Mixy.tv can be a great tool for you. This intelligent web application brings online videos together and gives you a streamlined video watching experience. It automatically imports and categorizes videos that your Facebook or Twitter friends are watching, and you can even manually add them from other online sources. The service comes with a beautiful interface that lets you filter results and create playlists. Moreover, by installing the Mixy.tv bookmarklet you will be able to add videos to your desired playlists from any website. Read More

ScreenWakeUp Auto-Locks The Screen Whenever You Put Your Android Device In Your Pocket

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Previously reviewed Smart Screen Off helps Android users put their device's screen to sleep by covering its proximity sensor, or by simply putting the device face down on a surface. The app is pretty effective in situations where you wish to get the maximum out of your device’s battery by turning off the screen momentarily. That said, the app is good only in scenarios where you do not intend to lock the screen, but only to set it to standby for a brief period. This is where ScreenWakeUp enters the frame. Fresh to the Google Play Store, the app uses your device’s proximity sensor to lock/unlock your device. You got it right; covering the proximity sensor (or putting it in your pocket) automatically locks your device, whereas uncovering the sensor does the opposite. No more need to reach out for your device’s power button to lock your Android device. Apart from said feature, the app also brings several handy customizable options that you can use to determine how your device behaves when you cover/uncover its proximity sensor. Read More

MP3dit: Batch-Edit Metadata & Album Art Of Music Files On Your Android Device

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You may have as many tracks in your personal music collection as you like, but if they aren’t supplemented with enough metadata (title, album name, artist info, album art, genre et al) your media playing apps are always going to go amiss while scanning, grouping or sorting these tracks appropriately. The rule is the same for desktop as well as mobile players, and Android variants are no exception in this regard. Thankfully, we nowadays have such competent apps that allow modifying details of audio files to our own liking. If you’re Android user, you no longer need to resort to a computer application in order to edit or fix the details of your favorite music tracks, as MP3dit is here. Sporting a simple UI, MP3dit lets you edit basic details of various media file formats, which include MP3, MP4, M4A, OGG Vorbis, M4P and FLAC. The app supports editing music files in batch, and lets you change artist info, album title, song title, genre, song order within an album, and album art (with option to fetch relevant images from Google Image Search). Read More