AddictiveTips » Hamza

Photo Sharing Network SmugMug Releases Official App For Windows Phone 7

Hamza — Sat, 19 May 2012 09:00:05 +0000

SmugMug might not be as popular as Instagram, but it is a service that is used by professional photographers and is not limited to just mobile platforms. The photos available on SmugMug are generally high in quality, because the user base of the service consists of people who don’t share photos just for fun. Rather than predefined, one-touch filters and photo effects, SmugMug allows its users to make adjustments they want to their photos. If you are a Windows Phone 7 user, and admire SmugMug, you’ll be delighted to know that the official mobile client of the service has just hit the Marketplace. The app lets you control every aspect of your SmugMug account, and even if you don’t have one, you can browse through public galleries and share photos from the app.

If you’re already a member of SmugMug, go to the bottom menu of the main page and tap the sign in option. For those who want to sign up, the option to do so is available on the login page. The accounts created via the app are valid for a limited trial period only, as signing up for a full account requires payment, which can only be done from the web interface. However, an account is not necessary to use the mobile client. You will still be able to browse through the beautiful SmugMug galleries, search for any photo, share images over your social networks and use the app as a photo editor. The only limitation is that you won’t be able to post photos to SmugMug without an account.

The app features the most popular images of the day on its main page. Within the Popular menu, you can view featured images from the past and the different categories that they’re sorted under. For SmugMug account holders, it is possible to create new galleries on their page and define new categories for the photos they share.

If you want to use the SmugMug app as a photo editor, just hit the camera button, snap a picture and tap the edit button in the bottom bar. The app has a neatly designed editing interface, including the following options:

Black & White
Brightness & Contrast
Color
Crop
Rotate
Sharpness

The options included in each of these menus are adjustable via sliders, and can be used to get pretty decent results. It is also possible to compare the result of each change with the original image using the before button next to the apply one.

Even if you don’t plan on spending all that money on a SmugMug account, the mobile client is a must-have if you’re a photography enthusiast. The app itself is available for free in the Marketplace.

Download SmugMug for Windows Phone 7

Downloader Elite: Perhaps The Best, Most Feature-Rich Download Manager For iPhone & iPad

Hamza — Fri, 18 May 2012 12:10:41 +0000

Downloader Elite is the sort of app you can’t really consign to just a single category. Most people will call it a simple download manager or a web browser for iPhone and iPad, but it is actually much more than that. The app includes a decent audio player, can handle a vast variety of video formats (including FLV and HTML5), has a PDF reader, and comes complete with a nice text editor. With support for so many file formats, the app makes everything convenient for users by providing them with a neat download manager. The app is Downloader Elite has AirPlay support, lets you play videos in the background and can be used to open ZIP or Office files. The list of offered features goes on and on, past the break.

The Browser in Downloader Elite is pretty similar to the stock Mobile Safari browser in iOS, featuring a full screen mode and a search area right next to the URL bar. Just like Safari, it is possible to change the default search engine from the app’s settings menu. You can switch between pages by hitting the penultimate button on the navigation bar. To download any content, just tap and hold your finger over it, and choose the Download option from the menu that pops up. If the target for the download is a video, tap and hold over any empty area of the page and then choose Download All Videos. If you want to save a whole page, there is the Save Current Page button for that, which will download all text and images on the current website.

All your active downloads appear in the Downloads section of Downloader Elite, and they will be automatically transferred to Files as soon as the download is complete. You can create folders within the Files menu, and then save distinct file formats in each. The app’s text editor will let you make basic changes to files, and then email them to anyone you want. Even a file that is not originally downloaded via Downloader Elite can be imported to the Files menu by hitting the ‘+’ button in the top left corner of the screen. The Playlists section detects all the audio files that have been downloaded via Downloader Elite, and you can listen to music from there in the background. Furthermore, the app supports iTunes file transfer and file sharing over Wi-Fi. The Settings menu will also let you change the browser’s User Agent to Firefox, so you can view pages in a new, desktop-compatible manner. Private Browsing can be enabled via a single toggle, and you may even set an exclusive passcode over the whole app.

Downloader Elite is a universal app, and has gone free for a limited time. You can grab it by heading to the following link.

Download Downloader Elite

Tweet From Your iPhone’s Springboard via The Dashtweet Widget [Cydia]

Hamza — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:06:40 +0000

Dashboard X (reviewed here) is all the rage over at the Cydia store these days. People are calling it the biggest thing to come to iOS since Notification Center. The widgets platform is still in its early days though, and there aren’t a lot of widgets available for it yet. However, due to the potential of Dashboard X, a lot of developers have now started coming up with new ideas for iPhone widgets. To no ones surprise, one of the first widgets exclusive to Dashboard X is related to Twitter. Meet Dashtweet, a Springboard widget that lets you tweet from the home screen of your iDevice. The widget even has some fancy features, like Pastie integration (for tweets that are longer than 140 characters) and support for various colors in which you can compose your tweets.

After you have installed Dashtweet, the widget won’t be added to your device’s Springboard even if you are already using Dashboard X. You will have to enable Dashtweet by entering jiggle mode, and then holding your finger over some empty area of the screen. You will see that Dashtweet has now become available in the widgets list. Simply enable it from there, and you are good to go. The widget will use the primary Twitter account that is set up on your iPhone, and you don’t have to sign in to Dashtweet separately. To change the color in which your tweets are composed in Dashtweet, go to the stock Settings app and enter the Dashtweet menu. The single option that it contains will let you choose the text color.

Tweets composed via Dashtweet can be posted to Twitter by hitting the blue button to the right of the widget. If the text exceeds the 140 character limit, Dashtweet’s Pastie integration will come into action. Admittedly, the widget isn’t completely bug free, but it is pleasing to the eye, and serves the purpose for which it has been designed. You can grab Dashtweet for free by heading to the BigBoss repo in the Cydia store. Do remember that you will need to have Dashboard X installed on your iPhone before you can use Dashtweet.

Tweet It!: Quick Twitter Photo Sharing & Custom Timeline Filters For WP7

Hamza — Fri, 18 May 2012 08:20:47 +0000

The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace has got quite a lot of popular Twitter clients on offer, probably owing to the fact that the official Twitter app for Mango phones is a bit too minimalistic. Tweet It! is a third-party Twitter client for WP7 that has the full potential of making you delete the official Twitter app from your phone altogether. Tweet It! is designed to facilitate sharing photos over Twitter, but that’s not its only good feature. The app also has a Drafts section that lets users save tweets when they are offline. Have you ever been in a situation when you thought of something you just had to tweet about, but forgot all about it because you didn’t have access to the internet at that moment? This is exactly the kind of scenario in which Twitter drafts can help you. The app also offers many other cool features, like displaying an inline preview of shared photos on your timeline, gesture control and a really handy Street Mode that makes the app transparent, ensuring that you don’t bump into anyone while using the app during a walk.

Once you have linked your Twitter account with Tweet It!, the app will take you straight to your timeline, but to get things in perspective, it is better if you visit the main menu first. The first option in the menu is Profile, and from there, you can view and edit your Twitter profile. The Profile menu uses your display picture as the background for the hub. Your Friends, Followers and tweet count are listed as separate tiles. Tweet It! also calculates the user’s tweets per day. The main menu lists the drafts option, one of the app’s distinguishing features, where you can write a tweet when offline, and save it for later use. Tweet It! can be used to manage direct messages, lists and favorites as well.

The app has an option for uploading photos, and that will take you straight to the Pictures hub, where you can select a photo and then tweet it. It is possible to gauge the real worth of the app by heading to the settings menu, as almost every part of Tweet It! is customizable from there. You can choose the font size the app uses, the number of tweets you want on your timeline at a time, the view of the timeline (it is possible to enable inline images) and turn on the street mode. If you think the existing background of Tweet It! is a bit too much, you can simply turn it off and use the default background theme of your device in its place. By default, the timeline supports the pull to refresh gesture, but you can change that to shake to refresh if you want. Tweet It! is a pretty good option for scrobbling as well, and will even let you define the default nowplaying format.

This remarkable app is usually a $1.99 download, but for a limited time, you can grab it for free by heading to the following web Marketplace link. Give it a try – you won’t regret it.

Download Tweet It!

CaseApp Lets You Design & Order Your Personalized iPhone 4 Or 4S Case

Hamza — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:12:55 +0000

The iPhone is one of the very few handsets that come with a glass back, making the device particularly vulnerable to scratches and even some serious damage. To counter this, most iPhone covers are focused on protecting the device’s back. Apart from that, iPhone covers are a good way of making a fashion statement and giving your iDevice a personal touch. The problem with the personalization part of covers is the fact that there is a limited amount of covers available in the market, and you might have to look for ages if you are trying to find the perfect cover for your iPhone. Designing your own iPhone cover sounds too difficult, and that’s why most people never even give it a thought. That’s exactly what CaseApp intends to change. This free iOS app lets users design a case for their iPhone using images from their device’s camera roll and some beautiful theming templates. Once you have designed the perfect cover, you can request the CaseApp team to ship it to you (no matter where you are), and you will get the new, customized iPhone cover for just under $30!

Designing custom iPhone covers is not as complex as it sounds (with CaseApp, at least). First of all, even before you launch the app, snap or download the photo you want to use on your cover. This is necessary as the app just loads images from the camera roll, and there is no option to directly shoot images from within CaseApp. Once you have got the image, the app has a few simple instructions for new users, and you can skip them by hitting the small close button in the top right corner. To kick things off, tap the big Start button in the middle of the bottom bar, which will take you to your device’s camera roll for choosing the right image. After that, the photo will be opened in the CaseApp editor. There aren’t too many editing options offered by the app, and you can just rotate, resize or crop the loaded image. Users have to make sure that the photo occupies the entire crop area of the editor, as you won’t be able to proceed without that. When everything is nice and tidy, hit the green arrow button to go to the next screen, where you will pick the theme that will surround the edited image.

CaseApp offers a fair number of themes, and you can browse through them by simple swipes. Before you actually use the theme, it is possible to preview it in both 2D and 3D. Use two-fingered gestures to swivel the model around when in 3D mode. If you are satisfied with the cover, hit the Order button. You will have to provide CaseApp with your email ID, mailing address and other relevant information. All the cases created using the app are priced at under $30 (exclusive of shipping), and the whole designing process won’t cost you anything, as this iPhone-optimized app is available as a free download in the App Store.

Download CaseApp

MagicPlan For iPhone Can Automatically Estimate A Room’s Dimensions & Generate Its Floor Plan

Hamza — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:00:46 +0000

If you are an Architect, an Engineering student, or just like making little tweaks here in there in your house every once in a while, you must be familiar with the complexities involved in drawing up even a rough floor plan for a room, or simply estimating its dimensions. Well, if you own an iOS device, you won’t have to worry about such matters ever again, thanks to the truly magical MagicPlan. This app automatically generates the floor plan of any enclosed space. What does one have to do to make the app perform this magical feat, you ask? You just have to stand in the middle of the room, point the device’s camera at each corner and that’s it! The app takes every door, cabinet or any other piece of furniture into account, and provides you with a surprisingly accurate measurement of the room.

When you launch MagicPlan for the first time, there is a video tutorial that is designed to teach users all the basics of MagicPlan. Apart from that short tutorial, there is a whole Tutorials section in the app, as MagicPlan offers so many features that most users might need some of those guides. Before you get started, go to the Settings menu of the app from its main page, and choose the units you want to employ for your measurements. MagicPlan will also plot the external location of the room on a map, and you can choose the view of that map from the Settings menu as well. Now that you have done all that, go back to the main page and hit New Plan to get started.

On the next screen, you have to choose the genre for the space you are about to measure. It is also possible to add a name and some extra notes before you start mapping. After all that has been done, go to the middle of the room (or any point from where all 4 corners of the area are visible). Choose any one corner of the room, and align the pointer on the screen with the actual corner. Once the line turns green, hit the icon to the right of the screen. This will drop a virtual road cone at the chosen point. Now, without moving your feet, swivel around to face the next corner of the room and repeat the same procedure. If there is a door or some other protrusion in your way, tap the button on the left of the screen when you reach its start, and tap the same button again as soon as you scan its other corner. After that, proceed as normal, marking of the remaining corners of the room. Make sure that you rescan the first corner at the end again, as without that, the floor plan will be skewed. When you have scanned all the corners of the room in this way, hit the Done button.

The app will provide you with a preview of the generated floor plan, and if you don’t like it, the app will try to reconstruct it for you (just hit the No button). Once the floor plan has been created by MagicPlan, you can start placing pieces of equipment and furniture on the diagram to make it as close to reality as possible. The floor plans from MagicPlan have to be exported via email or social media, and the app comes up with a warning if you try to take screenshots (although it doesn’t hinder the screen captures in any other way).

MagicPlan is a really useful app, and you won’t regret having it in your iDevice. The app is universal, and thus optimized for both iPhone and iPad. You can grab it for free by heading to the link given below.

Download MagicPlan

Use CalendApp To Create & Discover Facebook Events In Your Area [iPhone]

Hamza — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:36:42 +0000

Events might not be the most popular feature of Facebook, but they can certainly bring a lot of convenience to your life, as they provide a way of simultaneously inviting and managing your guests. There are two kinds of events on Facebook, private and public. Public events can be a lot of fun, but the problem with them is that you won’t know of their existence unless someone sends you an invitation, or you search for them specifically on the popular social network. That’s where CalendApp comes into the scene. This iPhone app lets users search for events in their area, or in any other city. You can also use CalendApp to promote your own events, and the app provides a nice way of keeping in touch with your friends’ latest activities.

If you choose to skip connecting your Facebook account with CalendApp, the app will still be useful for searching public events. By accessing your current location, CalendApp shows nearby events on the main map. If you want, it is also possible to search for public events in some other city, thanks to the Search menu. The events displayed by CalendApp are not just from Facebook, but can also originate from other users directly. Each event displayed by CalendApp has a map attached to it, showing the location where the gathering is planned to take place. There is also a short description, along with the genre of event.

The real fun begins when you connect your Facebook account with CalendApp. You can invite your friends if you want to, although that is not a compulsory step. The app neatly arranges all the imported Facebook data in the Facebook Events section. Here, all your friends are listed, and you can view their events individually if you want to. This section can also prove to be of use if you want to quickly invite a lot of people to a new event. Creating an event using CalendApp is simple. Just tap Add Event, snap a photo to associate with the invite, and you are good to go. You may also want to specify a few details about the gathering.

The best thing about CalendApp is the fact that you can immediately join an event that is in the feeds of a friend of yours. Not only that, the app has a separate feed that focuses exclusively on Facebook events, and will notify you as soon as there is some change in one of your followed events, or a user you are following creates a new event. You can follow locations in a similar manner as well.

CalendApp is an iPhone/iPod touch optimized app, and you can grab it for free from the link given below.

Download CalendApp

Ultimate Fitness App For iOS Provides Exercise-Specific Workout Timers

Hamza — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:15:10 +0000

You can probably find many fitness apps for iPhone and iPad that are more detailed and feature-rich as compared to Ultimate Fitness App (UFA), but UFA comes with a simplicity that makes sure you concentrate on your workout more than the app itself. UFA has got all the essential features that a fitness-related app should have, and it presents them in a pretty uncomplicated manner. The app comes with a few specialized timers meant to help you finish a workout in the perfect duration. As most people work out while listening to music, the app sports a simple music player of its own as well. The best thing about Ultimate Fitness App is the fact that it allows you to add notes related to different exercises, and if you don’t have the necessary knowledge yourself, you can download PDF files from any source of health and fitness information and use them to schedule your workout.

The main page of the app shows a clock and other main options. UFA has a background music that will keep playing wherever you visit the app (you can turn that off using the BGM button on the main page). The Settings menu of the app lets its users view the PDF files stored in the app. You can download such files from UFA’s own web version by going to the Workout Vault. If you are looking to make some fitness notes of your own, UFA has a minimalistic word editor that serves the purpose.

The Notepad in Ultimate Fitness App will let you save as many notes as you want. The music player in UFA has Repeat, Shuffle and volume options. Apart from that, users can also manage playlists through the Music Settings area. So, now that everything is place, you can start working out. To do that, go to the app’s homepage and hit the New Workout button. You will be asked to choose an existing PDF or note that will serve as a guideline for your workout.

Based on your selection of workout, UFA will suggest the type of timer you should use (or you can select one yourself). There are four timers in Ultimate Fitness App.

Ultimate Timer: Lets you define circuits, rest time and number of sets for each exercise, so that the measurements remain accurate.
Boxing Timer: Define the length of each round, and let it rip.
Tabata Timer: Tabata is a special form of training that consists of various sessions, each one 20 seconds in length.
Simple Session Timer: Pretty self-explanatory.

The history of your past workouts will show up in the Saved Workouts section, and visiting that menu can prove to be a good way of judging your own performance over time. The app is free for a limited time, and optimized for both iPhone and iPad. You can grab it from the link given below.

Download Ultimate Fitness App

KLIK For iPhone Automatically Tags Your Facebook Friends In Photos

Hamza — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:50:45 +0000

Most of us have been on some trip or gathering where literally hundreds of photos were taken by friends and then uploaded to Facebook, the most popular social network. If you were a part of some large group in an event, it can get tedious trying to tag everyone. KLIK by Face.com takes this burden off your shoulders and does all the tagging automatically through facial recognition. The best feature that can be programmed into an artificially intelligent being is the ability to learn with time, and that’s exactly what KLIK has on offer. If it doesn’t recognize the face automatically, you can enter the Learn mode of the app and teach the app yourself. The app has got some pretty good photo effects as well, and you can learn all about them by heading past the break.

As can be expected, the first step in the configuration of KLIK is the linking of your Facebook account with the app. Once you have granted the app access to your wall, you are ready to use KLIK as a camera replacement app. However, before we get to that, let’s discuss the Nearby menu within the app. That section displays all the publicly shared KLIK photos. The images are arranged according to their location, and you can view any photo by simply tapping its thumbnail. With the passage of time, the Friends section of KLIK will begin filling up with all the photos you snap of your friends using this app. The camera view of KLIK, which is the main feature of the app, has a very interesting Learn mode. If you point the camera towards one of your Facebook friends in real life, and the app recognizes them as someone else, hit the Learn button. KLIK will analyze the face more deeply, and come up with all the probable options regarding the person’s identity. Just hit the right option, and the app will save your choice for future reference.

If the KLIK camera recognizes your friends straight away, you can begin editing the photo after entering a short description and your current location (if the app somehow doesn’t detect it automatically). There are some good, Instagram-like filters available in KLIK, and they can be applied to images with a single tap. From the Share screen, users can save images to camera roll, share them via email or publish to Facebook and Twitter.

KLIK is an iPhone-optimized app and you can grab it for free by heading to the App Store link given below.

Download KLIK by Face.com

Inkflow: Quickly Scribble Ideas In High Quality, Rearrange Them With Ease [iOS]

Hamza — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:28:27 +0000

Finger painting appears to be a popular app genre among iOS users these days. It’s not just “Draw Something”; there are also many other sketching apps that have managed to gather a sizable fan base. Most such apps come with a slew of colorful features, and that’s exactly what sets Inkflow apart from them. The newly released Inkflow doesn’t even have the option to change the pen color (in the free variant, at least), but it is still a good app thanks to the attention it pays to minor details like the smoothness of the ink, and extremely good responsiveness of the pen. The app can be used to write down lengthy notes quickly, or you can create monochromatic drawings using it. Inkflow comes with a pretty neat editor of its own, and you can select any portion of the page for resizing or moving to a new location in the document altogether.

The albums within Inkflow are known as Books, and you can create as many as you like. Each Book consists of a maximum of 20 pages. There is an example book available in the app that gives you a general idea regarding the working of Inkflow. Using the app isn’t too complicated, and you just have to move your finger over a page to begin drawing or writing. Inkflow works in both portrait and landscape orientations, with the landscape mode revealing a few extra options. If you make a mistake, there is the undo button for that (only in landscape), and to create a new page, you have to get to the end of a book and then hit the forward button one more time. The Inkflow editor can be accessed via the app’s options screen or through the lasso button in landscape mode. This is by far the best feature of Inkflow, and using the edit tool, you can select any area of the current page, resize it individually or just move it to a new place on the page. Making changes to the selected area won’t affect the rest of the page.

Your Inkflow creations can be shared with the world pretty easily, as the app’s option menu includes email and Twitter sharing features. It is also possible to save any particular page of an Inkflow Book to your device’s camera roll via the Save Snapshot button. Inkflow offers an awesome zooming feature, and using the usual two-fingered zooming gesture, you can enlarge the page. The app indicates the zoom level with a neat HUD.

If you upgrade to Inkflow Plus (through an in-app purchase of $4.99), the app will shower you with multiple brushes and colors, but the basic functionality remains the same. The biggest advantage of Inkflow is its editing tool, and the fact that the ink remains smooth and perfect no matter how much you zoom in. Inkflow is a universal app, but it can prove to be more useful on an iPad’s bigger screen. You can grab it for free by heading to the following link.

Download Inkflow

Get The Latest Technology News With Official The Register App For WP7

Hamza — Thu, 17 May 2012 08:09:44 +0000

The Register is a popular UK-based news publication, dealing specifically with technology and gadgets. If you are a fan of The Register, then you must have noticed that the service doesn’t have any mobile version, and navigating through the cluttered full site on your Windows Phone 7 can prove to be a real headache. Fortunately, the official Mango app for The Register has made its way to the Marketplace, and now you can customize your feeds, comment on posts and read everything in a much more organized manner. If you have a Register account, you can save your preferences, so that items from only those categories are displayed that are of interest to you. Read on to know all about this handy little tech news app for WP7.

The first screen of the app features all the Latest News items from The Register. Apart from that, there are three separate feeds for your chosen categories. The app will only let you choose three categories at a time, ensuring that your homepage doesn’t get too cluttered. By default, these categories are Hardware, Software and Networks, but you may change these by heading to the Settings menu and removing any of the existing feeds before replacing them with a new one. If you don’t want to add a feed to your account, but still want to browse through its contents, just go to the menu marked All Feeds and tap any category from there.

Each item posted in The Register can be fully read within the app, and all the screenshots are displayed as well. If you want, you can share articles via email, SMS (link sharing) or post them to your social network. One of the best things about the app is its Comments section, where you can view comments for all the posts and add your own to the mix as well.

The Register app is available as a free download for all WP7 users, and you can grab it by heading to the following web Marketplace link.

Download The Register

Flipboard For iOS Updated With SoundCloud & VoiceOver Integration

Hamza — Thu, 17 May 2012 07:31:45 +0000

We have covered Flipboard for both Android (here) and iOS (here), and not many people can doubt the fact that it is aesthetically the most pleasing news app that has ever been released for either of these platforms. A large number of people already use the app, but after Flipboard’s latest iOS update, we are sure that its fan-base will increase manifold. So far, the app’s main focus has been on interface and visual features, but the new iPhone/ iPad update has taken a big step in a completely different direction. Flipboard now offers an Audio menu that lists SoundCloud feeds, lets you share your own recordings with your friends and throws in a nice music collection for good measure. Not only that, Flipboard has added VoiceOver integration for visually impaired users as well. Of course, VoiceOver is a native iOS feature, but now it is possible to make use of it if you want to navigate through the app and listen to your favorite articles.

To check out the new Audio menu, just tap the red search ribbon in the top right corner of the screen, and you will find the Audio option there. Like most of the other Flipboard menus, you can search through the Audio hub. There are many channels – some for music, while others are strictly news feeds with audio support. There are a few featured audio channels at the top of this menu. Just tap a channel’s name to enter it, or the ‘+’ button to add it to your personalized feed.

Each audio channel is divided into several pages, ordered chronologically. To listen to a particular song or news item, just tap the play button next to it. Flipboard’s audio player works in the background, so feel free to navigate away from the source page after playing a track. The app offers detailed audio controls as well, and you can view them by tapping the small musical note button in the bottom left corner of the Audio page. The controls will let you jump to any part of the sound clip, or add it to your favorites. Sharing options for audio clips are the same as regular Flipboard items. Using all these features, you can listen to news stories, songs, SoundCloud shares and podcasts.

The accessibility improvements brought by the update fully integrate the VoiceOver feature from Apple with Flipboard. If you have got VoiceOver set up on your iDevice, you can listen to any text written within the app. The update has been rolled out for both iPhone and iPad versions of the app, and you can grab the updated app from the following link.

Download Flipboard

Air Projector: View iPhone Photos & PDF Files In Any Desktop Web Browser Over WiFi

Hamza — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:48:06 +0000

Getting photos out of your iPhone is a fairly easy task. You don’t even need to launch iTunes to access your images. Nevertheless, you still have to use a cable, which is why there are still plenty of apps that make this task even easier. Air Projector is an iOS app that serves a similar purpose, but not just for extracting images. Using Air Projector, it is possible to display photos and PDF documents on any desktop computer without even transferring the data to it first. The app streams your media and documents to a web browser of your choice. The app doesn’t even need a desktop client as everything is done over Wi-Fi and HTTP.

When it comes to usage, Air Projector is as simple and minimalistic as they come. Users are provided with a few simple instructions when the app is launched for the first time, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how you can stream your phone’s content using Air Projector. If the app’s homepage does not show the Camera Roll option, just exit the app, kill it from the App Switcher tray and restart it. Now you can begin streaming your photos by entering the IP address provided in the bottom bar of the app in any web browser. If you want to make the content private, hit the settings icon in the bottom-left corner, and set up a username and password. These credentials will be requested every time someone tries to access your data by keying in the Air Projector IP address.

Streaming PDF documents isn’t as simple as streaming photos using Air Projector. The app doesn’t import PDFs automatically, and you have to open the file with the app using some other app (the stock Mail app, for instance). Just go to any app that can handle PDFs and has the Open in option, and choose Air Projector from the provided app list. Once the PDF has been imported to Air Projector in this manner, the app will show a page listing thumbnails for each part of the document. You can jump to a particular page, or start projecting a document page-by-page.

Air Projector is compatible with all major web browsers, and is optimized for iPhone only (although the app will work perfectly with iPad as well). You can grab Air Projector for free if you hurry to the download link provided below, as the app has temporarily gone free.

Download Air Projector

FastMall For WP7 Helps You Navigate Within Malls & Get Shopping Deals

Hamza — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:01:18 +0000

Even though Google has finally started taking an active interest in indoor maps, this particular genre of navigation is still in its infancy. There aren’t any major apps that can help you when you are lost within some huge building, given the fact that your GPS will be nearly useless on most such occasions. Add the lack of internet connectivity to this scenario, and your smartphone is left utterly redundant as a navigational device. Fortunately, if you have a Windows Phone 7, there is now a really easy solution to said problem. Meet FastMall, an amazing Mango app that will let you find your way inside any major shopping mall, and that too without GPS or internet connectivity! Doesn’t that sound too good to be true? Wait till you hear the rest of it.

If you allow FastMall to access your current location, all the nearby malls will show up on the app’s main screen. If you don’t find anything interesting there, it is possible to search for any particular mall or store. The app has a decent database, but of course, it doesn’t list every mall in the world. The good thing here is the fact that you can request the FastMall team easily to add a new mall to the app. Once you have found the mall you were looking for, FastMall takes you to its dedicated page. The info page shows mall timings, its location on the city’s map and other relevant data. As soon as you view a mall’s info, it is automatically downloaded for offline viewing. Inside the mall, users get a detailed indoor map of the place, highlighting all the stores and important location within the premises. You can apply filters to the map, so that only relevant locations are shown. FastMall also comes with detailed instructions to get to any area of the mall.

Although indoor navigation is the main feature of FastMall, it comes with some great secondary offerings as well. The app can be used to call up stores from anywhere (at least the ones whose numbers are listed), and you can come across some fairly decent deals using the app. The deals can belong to any store, and are sorted into different categories for the convenience of users.

If you are living in the US, the app can be particularly useful for you, and although malls from other countries are listed as well, their entries are usually not as detailed as the US ones. In any case, giving FastMall a try can’t hurt you one bit, as the app is available for free at the following link.

Download FastMall

AboutOne Organizes Your Family Info, Health & Other Personal Data [WP7]

Hamza — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:15:15 +0000

The People hub in Windows Phone 7 is a pretty good place to view all the updates from a particular contact, but as it is automated, you cannot add new information and details for each contact manually. That is exactly what AboutOne brings to WP7. The app can be regarded as a parallel contact book for your Mango phone, with the twist that it is designed exclusively for your relatives and family. The app ensures that you never forget your wedding anniversary, or any other important family date. AboutOne can also be used to keep track of the medical records of your family members and yourself and can be used as a scrapbook to accumulate your photos and memoirs as well.

In case you don’t have an AboutOne account already, create one from the app’s welcome page. Once that has been done, an instruction list shows up, telling you how to proceed. The first thing to do as soon as you have created an AboutOne ID is to import all your contacts to the app. This way, it gets easier to define family contacts, and to view updates from them. However, this step is not absolutely necessary, and you can manually add family members to the app at any time. To define a new familial contact, users have to enter a name, title, description and a photo. After all that has been done, you can go to the Health section and enter any important medical information there. AboutOne lets its users add important dates against each contact, and will remind you when an anniversary is approaching.

Apart from contacts, AboutOne can be used to preserve memories and important photos as well. There is a whole separate section for that, where you can also add a member’s educational record. The Stream section of the app displays all the important updates deduced from the information entered in a contact’s dedicated page. Probably the best feature of AboutOne is its Emergency menu, where you can mark any contact as an emergency one, and the app will always keep it within your reach in the dedicated Emergency hub.

AboutOne syncs all the entered data with the cloud, so there is no chance that you will lose important information. On the other hand, emergency data is also copied for offline viewing for the convenience of AboutOne users. The app is available for free, and you can give it a shot by heading to the following web Marketplace link.

Download AboutOne

PDF Reader Pro Is One Of The Most Comprehensive Document Viewers For iPhone & iPad

Hamza — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:00:59 +0000

An iOS app that handles PDF files might not sound like something too exciting, but PDF Reader Pro has so much more to offer. The app lets you view PDF files on your iPhone or iPad, but that’s not all it does. It rises above the crowd owing to the staggeringly large number of additional features it has on offer and is undoubtedly one of the best if its kind out there. PDF Reader can handle images, videos, HTML, iWorks files, common document formats and, of course, PDFs. Most of the formats compatible with the app can be converted to PDF with a single tap, regardless of the file’s size. In addition to all this, PDF Reader Pro comes with some amazing sharing options, and you can get files in and out of the app over WiFi, via email, iCloud or just about any other cloud service you can possibly think of. The app’s reader is sleek, and comes with a lot of options to improve your reading experience.

As already discussed, there are many ways of importing files to PDF Reader Pro, and you can even sync whole folders from iCloud or some other cloud storage service. The imported documents all appear on the main page of the app, and users can sort them by Name, Date or Size. PDF Reader allows you to set up a Private vault of sorts that can be hidden from view any time you want. The file formats supported by the app are many, and you can use PDF Reader Pro to open anything from password-protected ZIP files to comics and audio files. The app offers AirPlay support, and if you are using PDF Reader Pro on your iPad, you can even stream content via VGA.

The app’s reader is as good as all the other features offered by it. You can add Notes and Annotations to any page of a PDF document. The annotations can be made in various colors, styles and fonts. The Annotations button is located in the top bar within the app’s reader. Users can create multiple bookmarks within each PDF Reader Pro document, which is helpful for viewing a file later. As can be expected, PDF Reader Pro supports AirPrint, and you can print after making suitable changes to the document. If the opened file is not a PDF, you will find the option to convert it to one in the top bar. In our experience, even a large Word document gets converted by PDF Reader Pro within seconds. The cosmetic options offered in the reader view include Auto Flow, rotation lock, and zooming.

If you are looking for a simplistic view of the document, go to the file’s options and hit the text Reflow button. This will strip the document of everything but the text. A relatively new, and awesome, feature of PDF Reader Pro is its scan mode, using which you can import any image(s) to the app (or shoot a photo of a page) and then stitch the images together to create a new PDF file. The scanned pages can be adjusted pretty thoroughly before converting them, and you can tinker with their exposure, focus and whiteness. It is also possible to crop an image to highlight the text as best as possible.

What good is a PDF app if it can’t import or export files efficiently? The sharing options of PDF Reader Pro make it complete. If you want to load documents to the app, or get them to your PC, just hit the Wi-Fi sharing button in the app. You will be provided with an IP address that has to be put into your desktop browser’s address bar. As soon as you have done that, the list of all the docs in the app will appear on your computer’s screen, and you can download the files from there. It is also possible to upload files to the app from this web interface. Users can also create an iTunes backup of their files.

PDF Reader Pro will set you back $2.99 (50% off the original price during the sale, which stands at $5.99), but the price is more than justified when you start counting the number of things you can do using the app. PDF Reader Pro is a universal app, optimized for both iPhone and iPad.

Download PDF Reader Pro

TikTok For iPhone & iPad Lets You Design Your Very Own Alarm Clock

Hamza — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:45:48 +0000

The stock Clock app in iOS is pretty neat, and serves its purposes without many frills attached. You can use it to simultaneously view accurate time updates from several places, and set up alarms. Having said that, there is no way of changing the interface of that app, and users are bound to get bored of waking up to the same old sound again and again. This is where TikTok can help you. This beautiful app for iPhone and iPad comes equipped with an impressive array of options related to time and alarms. It is a complete replacement app for the stock Clock in iOS, and brings a slew of new features to the mix as well. The app has quite a lot of beautiful clocks within, and if those aren’t enough for you, it is possible to design one of your own! TikTok also allows its users to set the music from their device’s library as their alarm tone. The app has a pretty decent music player, whose best feature is to automatically turn off music at any predefined time.

TikTok offers both digital and analog clocks. You can switch between the existing designs by simply swiping across the main screen of the app. The dock below the main screen of TikTok is multi-purpose as well, and you can swipe through it separately to discover all the useful things it can do. The dock can be used as a calendar, a music player and a weather widget. The music player has to be initiated by hitting the ‘+’ button and choosing the songs you want the app to play. The little counter to the right of the dock screen (when in music player mode) specifies the number of minutes you want to play the music for. After that duration, the music will be automatically turned off, and this can prove to be a really useful feature if you are worried that you might fall asleep without stopping the track. The app has gesture support, too, and you can shake the device to make the flashlight come on.

Screen brightness can be controlled via upward and downward gestures. TikTok can be the perfect app for you if you frequently use your iDevice in dock mode, and for that particular purpose, it comes with a slideshow option. When you start a slideshow, the clock is automatically moved to the top left corner of the screen, leaving the majority of space for photos.

There are only 6 clock designs available in TikTok by default, but that number can be stretched to hundreds if you venture to the app’s designing menu. Here, you can easily personalize the clock’s dial, numbers, hands, color and anything you can possibly imagine. Each instance created in this manner can be saved individually and used later. Being a third-party app, TikTok has to be running if you want its alarms to use custom music, and it doesn’t bypass silent mode.

For aesthetic purposes, TikTok (+Alarm) might become many people’s favorite alarm clock app pretty soon. The app is optimized for both iPhone & iPad, and has gone free for a limited time. You can download TikTok from the following link.

Download TikTok (+Alarm)

Autodesk 123D Catch For iPad Lets You Convert Images Into 3D Models

Hamza — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:30:58 +0000

No one can doubt the hardware quality of the camera in most iOS devices, especially the newer ones, but many have complained that the accompanying software is not up to the mark. Even something as simple as panorama mode is missing in the stock iOS Camera app. However, all these shortcomings don’t count for much, thanks to the large number of photography-related apps available in the App Store. 123D Catch is an iPad app that aims to turn panoramic images into a thing of the past. Using this app, you can convert simple images into 3D models, and view them from any angle using the 123D Catch viewer (available within the app). All you have to do is snap a bunch of photos, submit them to the Autodesk cloud, and within a few minutes, you will have a three-dimensional adaptation of the images. Read on for details.

A short introductory video is played when you launch 123D Catch for the first time on your iPad. Once you have seen (or skipped) it, an example image shows up. You can play around with this photo to learn what 123D Catch really means by 3D. The app makes use of the gyroscope in your tablet, and by moving the iPad around, you can change the photo’s orientation. Another method for watching the image from a different angle is to swipe across it using one finger. A two-fingered swipe changes the overall position of the photo while keeping the angle steady. If you get too lost in the image’s angles, just press the first button on the right of the bottom bar, and the photo will come back to its original state. The button next to the first one can be used to toggle gyro controls. It is possible to export a capture of the image (from any angle) to your device’s camera roll, or share it with anyone via email.

Other than the one example image displayed by the app on its initial launch, there are a few more available in the gallery as well. From the gallery, you can go to the Autodesk community pages and view the 3D images shared by fellow 123D Catch users. If you are looking for a particular image, tag or user, the search button is located in the bottom right corner of the page. It is also advisable to sign up for an account of your own at this stage, as without doing so, you won’t be able to create new 3D images. Creating a new Autodesk account requires nothing more than your email address and a few other details.

Now that you have got a 123D Catch account, you can create new projects with ease. Just hit the camera button from the gallery page, ready the object in front of you and start shooting. For best results, make sure that the background is non-uniform and unreflective, and doesn’t have too many extra objects. The subject of your photo shouldn’t be reflective as well, and must be rich in detail. The user just has to snap the target’s photo from every angle possible (a maximum of 40 photos can be shot for a single project), and then hit the Finish Capture button. After that, make sure you are connected to the internet and hit the project’s thumbnail to render it in 3D. A few minutes will elapse, and you can navigate out of the app in that duration if you want to. 123D Catch alerts its users with a push notification as soon as their project is ready to be viewed.

The results of user projects might not be as awe-inspiring as the example ones, but they are still pretty good. The app is free, and if you own an iPad, do give 123D Catch a try by heading to the link given below.

Download 123D Catch

Set iOS 5.1 Camera Grabber To Launch Any App With GrabberApp [Cydia]

Hamza — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:00:23 +0000

Back before the release of iOS 5.1, we covered a Cydia tweak named AnyAppLock (reviewed here), which simply allowed users to replace the iPhone lockscreen camera button with a shortcut to any app of their choice. A lot has changed since then, and camera grabber has taken the place of the camera button on iPhone’s lockscreen. This implies that now we need a new Cydia tweak that can launch an app (other than the stock Camera) when the grabber is slid upwards. Fortunately, such a tweak has already arrived in the iOS jailbreak store, and is named GrabberApp. Even if you haven’t updated to iOS 5.1 yet, the tweak can still be of use to you, as it will add the camera grabber to your lockscreen first, and then allow you to program it to open any app you want. Head past the break to know all about GrabberApp, the useful new tweak in the Cydia store.

GrabberApp is available in Cydia’s BigBoss repo, and you can download it for free from there. Once it has been installed to your iDevice, the tweak will not add any new Springboard icons, as it has to be configured via a menu in the stock Settings app. In case you aren’t on iOS 5.1, go to the lockscreen, and you will see that the ordinary camera grabber has been added there. Now, go to the GrabberApp menu, and choose the app you want to configure against the grabber slider. The list of apps available there includes both stock and third-party ones, and you just have to hit the Enable button once you have chosen the app. Now, whenever you use the camera grabber, the selected app will show up instead of the camera.

GrabberApp is compatible with passcode as well, and you won’t be able to navigate to any part of iOS other than the chosen app without entering the correct passcode. The tweak is free, and if you like camera grabber but want more out of it, GrabberApp is just the thing you need.

Swipe To Quickly Delete A Contact On iOS With OneByOne Contacts [Cydia]

Hamza — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:58:59 +0000

Despite all its positives, iOS has a few really annoying features that have managed to stay in the OS for a very long time. One such nuisance is the contacts deletion button. If you want to delete a contact from your iPhone, iOS seems to oppose this change with all its might. The Delete button is so well-hidden in the stock Phone app, that it is a nightmare trying to remove multiple contacts from your iDevice. You have to open each contact page individually, hit the Edit button and then scroll to the bottom of the page to find the Delete button. Why go through all this when you have OneByOne Contacts? It is a new Cydia tweak that lets users delete contacts quickly via a single swipe across contacts’ names. The tweak also lets you decide whether you want to remove a contact as soon as you swipe across it, or if you want the confirmation button to appear first.

By default, the confirmation feature of the tweak is turned off. You can control it by going to the stock Settings app and entering the OneByOne Contacts menu under Extensions. There are just two buttons in the tweak’s menu. The first one, marked Confirm delete, is a toggle that will make you hit the delete button after you have swiped, so that you don’t lose contacts accidentally. The other Status Bar button replaces the Groups button in the Contacts app with an Edit button that can also be used to delete contacts. If you don’t use groups on your iPhone and aren’t a fan of gesture control, this can prove to be a good option for you.

OneByOne Contacts is a free tweak, and you can grab it by heading to the BigBoss repo in the Cydia store. The tweak has no disadvantages, and adds a much-needed feature to iOS, and that’s why you should give it a try if you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPad.

Dashboard X: Add Notification Center Widgets To iOS Springboard & Lock Screen [Cydia]

Hamza — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:40:54 +0000

Widgets are something that have been exclusive to Android so far, and although iOS now offers a couple of native Notification Center widgets, they are not the same as Android’s ever-present and feature-rich ones. Fortunately, things have finally taken a turn for the better for jailbroken iOS users. Now, it is possible to have home screen widgets on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, thanks to the recently released Dashboard X Cydia tweak. The tweak can be considered a whole new platform for widgets that allows users to add several Notification Center widgets to the home screen. Not only that, you can make the lockscreen area of your iPhone more functional and productive as well, using the tweak’s Dock Mode, which lets users summon widgets at will, so that they don’t clutter the screen all the time. Sound interesting? Read on for details.

Setting up Dashboard X’s widgets is easy. As already discussed, the tweak has two modes. You can add permanent, translucent widgets to the Springboard of your device, or configure the Dashboard X dock mode to hide widgets until they are made temporarily visible via an Activator gesture. To get started, just tap and hold your finger over any empty area of the Springboard, and as soon as you enter wiggle mode, the option to add new widgets to the Home screen will appear. The freshly-displayed list will contain all the installed widgets supported by Dashboard X, and you can enable them simply by hitting the Add Widget button.

From the stock Settings app, you can change the way Dashboard X behaves overall. The option to enable or disable widgets is present here, in case the gestures didn’t work for some reason. From this menu, users can also choose the Activation Method. The tweak is compatible with all Activator gestures, and the chosen gesture will take you into dock mode (double tap on the status bar is the default gesture). To get out of dock mode, just double tap any area of the screen. The best thing about dock mode is the fact that it keeps your screen uncluttered, and the widgets only appear when the users performs the specified gesture. Another advantage, and perhaps the bigger one, is the mode’s lockscreen compatibility.

Many of the existing Notification Center widgets are compatible with Dashboard X, and a lot of new widgets are expected to be released soon. Dashboard X will cost you $1.99, but the new functionality it offers is certainly worth the money. You can grab the tweak from the ModMyi repo in the Cydia store.

ESPNcricinfo For WP7: Cricket Scores, Match Details, Articles & More

Hamza — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:30:39 +0000

Almost all Cricket fans know what Cricinfo is, as it is the best source for getting live updates related to the gentlemen’s game. The popular website from ESPN is not limited to just scores and fixture details, and has got practically everything related to Cricket, including articles, photos, videos and rankings. Although you can utilize the mobile version of the site on your Windows Phone 7 device, it is nowhere near as comprehensive as the full version of the famous website. So, it must come as a pleasant surprise for Cricket fans that a new app, named ESPNcricinfo, has just been released in the Marketplace, and it is Cricinfo’s official Mango client! The app has a few pretty good features that are enough to put even the web version of Cricinfo to shame. Read on to learn all about this awesome WP7 app.

The app starts off with a view of all the ongoing and recent matches from around the world. This matches page is divided into three subsections, including Live, Fixtures and Results. Each match’s icon shows a summary of the game, and you can go to its dedicated page by tapping the thumbnail. Depending upon the match’s status, users can view the result, scorecard, preview and other related info. Although most sections of ESPNcricinfo can be accessed via swiping across screens, the menu is still pretty useful, as it displays links to all sections in one place, including scores, fixtures, records, rankings and a bunch of others.

The magazine menu of the app displays articles (both informational and humorous) posted on the Cricinfo blog. The news presented in ESPNcricinfo can consist of videos, photos and audio clips, but it is also possible to browse through these media files by going to their respective sections. The Settings menu of the app allows users to choose their favorite team, so that updates are provided accordingly.

All the features we have discussed so far are the same as the web version of Cricinfo, but there are a couple of things that take ESPNcricinfo to a whole new level of awesomeness. One of these features is the app’s landscape mode that brings up extra information if you are in one of the supported screens. For example, while viewing a match’s summary, it is possible to take a look at the detailed scorecard of the game by tilting the phone horizontally. Another similar feature is the Lean Back mode, which displays the live score from any ongoing game in full screen. This means your device can be used as a score indicator in dock mode.

ESPNcricinfo is a free app, and a must-have if you are Cricket fan using WP7.

Download ESPNcricinfo

Official TIME App Released For Windows Phone 7

Hamza — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:45:00 +0000

Time is among the most popular and well-respected publications on the face of the globe, and with the advent of technology, the weekly magazine has moved into the cyber world with a pretty good website, and online versions of its issues across all major platforms. As can be expected, Windows Phone 7 didn’t have an official Time app till now, but that has finally changed, and now, you can browse through the service’s latest articles via TIME Mobile, the newly released official Time client for Mango phones. The app isn’t too cluttered, like most other news-related apps, but you can still control almost every aspect of its usage. There are separate sections for articles, videos and photos, and the best thing about TIME Mobile is the fact that you can save any item for offline viewing.

The main section of the app lists the Latest News from around the world. Each story displayed in this menu has a thumbnail associated with it, and you can view more than just the featured articles by hitting the more button at the end of the list. Once you open an article from this page, it comes with some pretty good sharing and navigation options. Each story is properly tagged, and source links are provided where necessary. From the bottom menu, users can add comments and navigate to the next or previous article in the list. If you want to make a page available for offline viewing, just hit the save button from the bottom menu.

The Gallery section in TIME Mobile showcases all the popular images featured in the publication. Some of these galleries can provide you with a few pretty awesome wallpapers for your phone, as downloading the photos requires nothing more than hitting the save photo button in the bottom bar. Like the articles in the app, photos can be shared with other users as well, using email and/or social networks set up on your device.

Much like the Gallery, the TIME Mobile app also has a Videos section, where users can browse the latest addition to the TIME video collection. The page marked Most Popular displays the stories that have attracted most views, and acts as a TOP 10 for popular news items. If you are interested in reading the articles related to one genre or category only, go to the sections tab and hit the desired button. On this page, there is also the Settings menu that allows users to enable push notifications and live tile.

TIME Mobile is a free app, and you can download it from the following link.

Download TIME Mobile

HomeSpringPage For iOS Adds An Empty Homescreen For Dashboard X Widgets [Cydia]

Hamza — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:30:16 +0000

The Cydia store is certainly an active place, and every few days, a new tweak is bound to create a lot of hype among the iOS jailbreak community. These days, this tweak happens to be Dashboard X (recently reviewed here). After all, who wouldn’t want to have some truly gorgeous and useful widgets on the Springboard of their iPhone? Dashboard X is a rather new addition to the Cydia store, and hence, far from perfect. For example, many people have complained that the widgets obscure app icons, as there are only a few empty spaces available on the Springboard. Also, what if you want the first screen of your iDevice to consist of nothing but widgets? All these problems can be solved using a simple Cydia tweak named HomeSpringPage. The tweak performs the sole task of adding a blank screen on the first slot of your Springboard, and you can use that screen for placing all the Dashboard X widgets you want.

HomeSpringPage is available in the BigBoss repo of the Cydia store, and you can download it for free if you have a jailbroken iDevice. After its installation, the tweak adds no new Springboard icons or options in the Settings app. You don’t have to configure HomeSpringPage in any way, as the tweak will give you a blank screen on your Springboard automatically. Now that you have a blank screen, it is possible to neatly arrange your favorite Dashboard X widgets here, and use it as an area exclusively for these widgets, so that none of the existing app icons will be obscured.

If you are a fan of Dashboard X, HomeSpringPage is a must-have. However if you are not using the widgets platform, skip installing this tweak, although it won’t cost you anything even if you do.

Official LinkedIn Client For WP7 Arrives In The Marketplace, Speaks Metro All Over

Hamza — Mon, 14 May 2012 07:47:54 +0000

Windows Phone 7 offers deep integration with quite a few services and social networks, and provides a good way of managing and viewing all your accounts in one place. One of the services integrated with Mango is LinkedIn, and many of the features of that social network can be accessed from the Me tile. However, that cannot be considered a replacement for a dedicated LinkedIn client for WP7, as there are many things that can’t be done via the People hub. So, it is good news for Windows Phone users that the official LinkedIn client for Mango phones has finally been released. The app contains everything you may expect from an official client for such a popular service, and has “Metro” stamped all over its gorgeous interface.

The welcome page of the app offers the options to login or create a new LinkedIn account. The app has the blue theme generally associated with this social network for professionals, and even the icons in the phone’s status bar are dyed in the same tone. The first section that shows up after you have logged in to your LinkedIn account, is the Updates page, displaying a feed of all the latest activities of your contacts and followed groups. You can add a new update of your own using the ‘+’ button in the bottom bar. Next to that is the search option, using which you can look for any LinkedIn user or group. Swiping to the right when you are on the Updates screen will bring you to the app’s main menu.

The page lists the following 5 tiles:

LinkedIn Today: The latest updates from the LinkedIn team, and other featured articles on the network.
Groups: Manage and view all the activities from the groups you might have joined.
Jobs: This section suggests suitable available jobs depending upon your inclinations and experience.
Inbox: Send/ receive messages and invitations.
Companies: All the organizations you are following show up here.

If you want to manage your own LinkedIn profile using the app, just go to the You page, and the app shows the list of people who have recently visited your profile, along with suggestions regarding People you may know. On other people’s profiles, you can view their experience and other relevant information.

The app is available as a free download, and you can grab it by heading to the following link.

Download LinkedIn for Windows Phone 7

Stream & Download Free MP3 Songs On WP7 With Fildo

Hamza — Sat, 12 May 2012 20:00:36 +0000

YouTube is probably the best source of online music if you don’t want to browse through a lot of websites, looking for a working link. That is why there are many YouTube clients on Windows Phone 7, and some of them even let users download songs as MP3 audio files. However, surfing through YouTube or similar services still requires some time and effort, and the conversion of video to audio is often not smooth enough. Fildo is a new WP7 app that promises to be every music-lover’s dream come true. The app comes with an impressive collection of MP3 songs that you can stream or download to your device. That’s not all; Fildo can be used as an alterative to the Music + Videos hub of WP7, as you can create playlists, listen to songs in the background or under lockscreen, and view lyrics for each.

There isn’t a lot of hassle involved in the app’s usage. The menu is simple enough, and has just two important functions. From the Playlists menu, users can manage all their past downloads and arrange them in any order. However, the real fun begins in the Search area of the app. From this menu, it is possible to look for any track or artist. The search result limit for each keyword is 200, and that means you can find a lot of good stuff as a result of each search.

Every MP3 song you come across while using Fildo can be streamed or downloaded. Of course, it is not possible to export the songs to the stock music player, but that isn’t too much of a problem, as the app’s own player is pretty good. To stream a track from among the search results, just tap it once and it will start playing. Fildo supports continuous play, and this means that after you begin streaming one song, the app will automatically start playing the next search result when the first one is over. It is possible to manually change the song as well, and the option to do that is available in the bottom bar.

To view the lyrics of the current song, users have to swipe to the right of the search screen. Songs can be downloaded if you press and hold your finger over a title, and then hit the save icon once it shows up. The downloads made via Fildo appear in the Playlists section of the app. You can create a new playlist by long pressing any track title and then hitting the ‘+’ button.

Unlike the stock WP7 music player, Fildo offers the option to reorder playlists from within the app. Fildo has got just about everything, and although the collection might not be absolutely perfect, you will still find most good numbers available in Fildo. And did we mention that, just like all the MP3s within it, the app is completely free?

Download Fildo

Newser For WP7: News App With Concise Stories, Readers’ Reactions & A Great UI

Hamza — Sat, 12 May 2012 10:55:28 +0000

In today’s world, getting information regarding any subject is fairly easy. These days, the question is not “How to get information?”, but “Where to get it?”. Technology has endowed us with a lot of sources for latest news and other up-to-date information. Even the age of television is passing, and now many people depend on their smartphones for staying in touch with all the important happenings. Even Windows Phone 7, a platform that is not known for the choice of apps in its Marketplace, has got a decent number of news apps. Newser is a new app for WP7 Mango devices that shows the world how news apps should be made. Not only has it got an absolutely gorgeous interface, the way it presents news to its readers is quite unique as well. The sole aim of Newser is to keep users interested in what they are reading. The news items are concise, and the app provides a unique voting system for them, which involves user reactions instead of the regular thumbs up/down or numerical rating. The app offers way more than that, so read on to find out everything about Newser.

Newser presents an optional tutorial when you launch it for the first time, and you can view that by hitting the OK button in the Welcome message. It is possible to use the app without having to sign up for a Newser account, but you will need that if you want to vote on stories. The main page of the app is divided into all the usual sections that news apps usually have. You can read popular, trending and breaking news by swiping across the main screen. One rather curious section of Newser is the Superlatives area, which lists news stories that have been voted to be of a particular type by users. There are six of these genres that are predefined in Newser, and the app’s voting system revolves around these categories. A news item in Newser can be voted hilarious, brilliant, scary, depressing, intriguing or annoying. The Superlatives menu shows the stories that have received the most votes under each type.

Once you open an article in the app, you are sure to notice that the Newser writers certainly don’t beat around the bush, and this makes the stories to-the-point and interesting. By swiping to the right, you can view related posts, comments from users and other data associated with the article. At the end of most Newser articles, the links for the sources of the material are provided, and the app has a pretty good tagging system to go with. You can share a story with anyone via email or through your social network. Newser sports a pretty decent search function, and finally, you get the option to see the articles in a list view, as well.

The Newser app for WP7 has been released in collaboration with Nokia, but it works with non-Lumia devices as well. You can grab it for free by heading to the following link.

Download Newser

AutoProtect Bypasses iPhone Lock Screen Passcode When On A Specific WiFi Network [Cydia]

Hamza — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:25:40 +0000

If you are even remotely concerned about your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad’s privacy, lock screen passcode is the most rudimentary measure that can (and should) be taken, and previously reviewed Cydia tweak, CleverPin, makes that passcode intelligent enough to automatically disable itself whenever the device is connected to a trusted WiFi network, for instance, the network at your home or any other location where the chances of your privacy getting violated are minimum. The tweak also offers some other useful options (like defining a time period during which the passcode will be disabled), but you have to pay $1.99 to get it. Meet AutoProtect, a new Cydia tweak that provides the same functionality for free!

AutoProtect is available in the ModMyi repo of the Cydia store, and once you have downloaded the tweak, it will add a new menu to the Settings app of your iDevice. From the AutoProtect menu, you can configure the passcode bypass functionality. Just toggle on the button marked Enabled AutoProtect, and then enter the name of the trusted network under the Authorized WiFi Network field. Once you have done that, hit your device’s Home button, and AutoProtect will work its magic automatically. If you are currently using the added Wi-Fi network, the passcode should now be temporarily disabled. As soon as you wander out of the network’s range, the passcode protection will come back on.

AutoProtect is the kind of tweak you just have to employ once, and then forget all about it. There aren’t too many complicated settings, and the configuration procedure is extremely simple. To top it all, the tweak is available for free in the Cydia store. So, if you have a passcode set up on your iDevice, do give AutoProtect a try, as it can counter a really annoying problem.

Stashpix For iPhone: Create Virtual Photo Stashes At A Location, View Those Left By Others

Hamza — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:20:00 +0000

The thrill of discovering something that has been hidden from general view has always held a certain charm for people of all ages. Be it a treasure hunt, or just some small scavenging game, coming across a hidden stash is sure to make your day. This is the principle the new iOS app, Stashpix, is based upon. The app lets you view photos or albums shared by other users, but the distinguishing feature of Stashpix is that you have to be in the area where the image was originally shared in order to view it. Stashpix displays all the stashes of photos in your vicinity, and lets you add to them as well. In a similar manner, you can leave your mark on any area by creating a virtual stash there, so that future visitors of the location are able to appreciate your shares. It’s like geocaching, but for photos.

The Nearby Stashes page of Stashpix features one popular album each day, and that album can belong to any location. Apart from this Stash Of The Day, the main page of the app also lists the stashes found near your current location. The app keeps scanning for such albums automatically. When you tap a stash, you are taken to its dedicated page that displays all the photos in it, along with a map of the location where it was created. There are two kinds of albums in Stashpix. Locked albums consist of photos that are added by the original poster only, while anyone can make additions to an unlocked stash.

If you want to create a photo stash of your own, Stashpix has an Aviary-powered photo-editing plugin that will let you spruce up your photos before they are added to the current location’s stash list. There are some pretty good photo effects and tools available in the editor, and you can enhance your image in a lot of ways before saving it to the album. Once a stash has been created, you cannot add more photos to it unless you are again at the same location (although photos can be deleted). Stashpix has a separate menu for letting you manage your own albums, although the location restrictions apply there as well.

Stashpix is a free app, and optimized for iPhone and iPod touch only. If you like a bit of mystery and adventure, head to the App Store link provided below and grab this neat app.

Download Stashpix

CacheClearer For WP7: Clear App Cache Files To Speed Up Performance [Homebrew]

Hamza — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:45:05 +0000

Anyone who has been using a Windows Phone 7 device for a considerably long time, must surely have noticed that their phone becomes a bit laggy with the passage of time. This issue is not exclusive to the Mango platform; the same thing happens on Android, iOS and even desktop platforms. This is owing to the fact that the system’s cache starts building up as the app count on your device increases. By default, or even through third-party apps, there is no way of clearing your WP7’s app cache. That’s where the new Homebrew “CacheClearer“ comes into the picture. Using this app, you can free up a lot of internal space (in the order of several Megabytes) on your device. Not only does it let you analyze the cache usage of each app individually, you can use it to get rid of the device’s lag by cleaning up everything in a safe and convenient way.

Despite the app’s rather complicated-sounding functionality, using CacheClearer is really easy. The main page of the Homebrew lists all the apps that are installed on your device. From the Settings menu in the bottom bar of the app, you can choose to run it in background so that it can continue working even if you navigate away while the cache clearing operation is under way. The button marked quick clean at the bottom of this main screen will let you clear the cache of all the apps present in the main list. On our rarely used Omnia 7, doing this freed up a total of 54 MB of space! A pretty impressive haul for such a device.

In case you want to view and clear each app’s cache individually, just tap its name in the list. In the Summary section of each app’s dedicated page, you will be presented with a pie chart, showing the percentages of the file types occupying the cache on the app’s behalf. To see the details of each area in the app, just tap anywhere on the chart and explanatory text will pop up. By swiping to the right, you can view the list of all the Files that are included in the app’s cache folder. To clear individual caches, just tap the Clear cache button on the app’s page.

CacheClearer is a really useful app, and serves the dual purpose of freeing up extra space and making your phone more efficient. So, if you have got a rooted Windows Phone device, CacheClearer is a must-have utility. You can grab the XAP from the download link provided below.

Download CacheClearer

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[via WPHacker]

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