Hamza Khalid

Handles Windows Phone, iOS and Cydia. A big WP7 fan, who just loves writing about anything and everything. Google+

Set Your iPhone To Auto Enable WiFi When Launching Certain Apps

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iOS’ most endearing trait might be its slick interface, but the platform is great at facilitating users in their everyday tasks as well. This is evident from the 50MB download cap for each app installation over mobile data in the App Store. Most of us have limited data plans and with the kind of internet speeds offered by 3G and LTE, one might easily forget to switch to a Wi-Fi connection before starting a heavy download or a long video streaming session. Also, if you don’t have a mobile data connection, there is no point in launching apps like Mail and Facebook without first activating your Wi-Fi. Carnitine is a new Cydia tweak that has been designed with all these scenarios in in mind. It allows you to decide for what apps you want to enable Wi-Fi for upon their launch. You don’t have to manage an extensive lists of apps for this purpose, as Carnitine lets you configure everything on the go. Read More

Picmatic: Music Player, Photo Viewer & Clock For Docked iPhone & iPad

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Most smartphone apps are focused around a particular type of content; we generally use separate apps for music playback, photo viewing, and clocks, but Picmatic brings these features together in a single package in a way that actually makes sense. As you might have already figured, this can come real handy in dock mode. Just the way an iPad can display photos on its lock screen in the form of a slideshow, Picmatic has a customizable and dynamic grid consisting of images imported from your device’s camera roll. To add some spice to the whole show, the app offers many photo filters that you can apply to the images. Picmatic runs in full screen and also adds a nifty clock to the mix for your convenience, all while playing music in the background from your local collection. The app supports gesture-based controls so that the collage displayed on the screen remains free from any clutter that conventional music playback controls would cause. Read More

Skimn Is A Simple But Attractive RSS Feed Reader For Your iPad

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With the advent of social media, RSS feeds have become significantly less relevant for the masses, but we've been seeing several smartphone apps and web services that have proved them to be still useful for a lot of us. Google Reader has become very user-friendly, and apps like Flipboard offer great RSS support as well. Skimn is the latest player to enter this arena. Designed for the iPad, this app lets users build their RSS feed collection from scratch, and offers some neat options to manage it. There is no need to manually subscribe to a feed by looking for the RSS button on its website; you can instead discover feeds by searching for a particular website or topic, right from the app itself. To help keep things manageable, you can easily create categories, and move feeds to any position in the list. Skimn supports gestures, has a night mode and facilitates users in keeping pace with all the latest news stories in the minimum possible time. Read More

Task Paper Lets You Set A To-Do List As Your iPhone’s Wallpaper

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Just yesterday, we covered the Reminders+ Cydia tweak that allows you to pin any reminder to their iPhone’s lock screen. Though being a Cydia tweak, you need to jailbreak your iOS device in order to install it. If you don't want to go through that and void your warranty, fret not - we've got an app for you that accomplishes something similar, albeit in a different manner. Task Paper adds full to-do lists to the lock screen or Springboard of your iDevice by converting the lists into customizable wallpapers that can be applied to your device like any ordinary image. The app does have its obvious limitations like the extra step involved to apply the wallpaper but in the end, it gets the job done. Read More

Digiback For iPhone Offers Unlimited Photo Effects Created & Shared By Its Users

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Ever since Instagram got insanely popular, photography has become one of the most crowded genres in the App Store. With this level of competition, a photo editing app needs to offer something completely unique to get significant admiration. Digiback offers this uniqueness in the form of countless photo effects. Like most other photo editor and effects apps, this Digiback has a few predefined filters that can be used with a single tap. However, the real uniqueness of the app lies in its vast collection of downloadable effects. Even if that’s not enough for you, Digiback lets you combine multiple filters to create a new one of your own. Pretty neat, isn’t it? To top it all, you also get access to social media statistics for photos that you have shared from the app. Read More

Pin Any Reminder To The iPhone Lock Screen With Reminders+

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Setting an alarm for important tasks is useful to a certain extent but if you really want to get something done, persistent nagging often does the trick. Apple seems to realize that, as is evident from the constant presence of upcoming reminders in the Notification Center. While the idea is great, not everyone visits the Notification Center regularly. Your iPhone’s lock screen, on the other hand, comes into view quite frequently. Now, users of jailbroken iDevices have an easy way of pinning any reminder they want to the lock screen of their iPhone, thanks to a new Cydia tweak, Reminders+. Reminders+ calls this list of lock screen reminders 'Bulletin', and they are not shown in the form of lock screen notifications, so you don’t have to worry about inadvertently launching the Reminders app through them. Read More

Create Amazing iPhone & iPad Wallpapers With Simple Swipes Using Deko

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Apart from the select few who never bother changing the wallpaper on their iPhone even once after taking it out of its box, everyone loves new home screen backgrounds. You can download pictures from various online sources, or if you're good with art and graphic designing, you can make your own. Deko is an iOS app that eliminates the need to search and design, providing you with a totally new way to get new wallpapers. Using this app, users can create unique abstract designs in seconds, without any designing skills whatsoever. All you have to do is swipe across the screen once or twice and the app generates wallpapers with random, textures, patterns and colors. The length of your swipes determines how different the next generated wallpaper will be compared to the current one. This means an infinite number of differing images that can be saved to your device, shared with friends, and of course, set as the wallpaper. Read More

Design & Send Real-Life Birthday Cards To Facebook Friends From Your iPhone

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Apple’s own Cards service and Ink Cards for iOS and Android provide an excellent way to let your friends and family know you're thinking of them without having to leave your house to buy or mail post cards. These apps let you design and send real-life greeting cards to your contacts, all from your mobile device. Recently, some other developers have started venturing into this genre of apps, Birthday Cards by Cleverbug for iOS being the hottest new entrant. The app’s main focus is birthday cards, and it doubles as a reminder app for upcoming birthdays of your Facebook friends. The thing that makes Birthday Cards stand out from among other similar apps is its ability to automatically incorporate photos of your friends into the cards you are making for them. It is also possible to put pictures into templates manually, and of course, to enter personalized text into cards before you place an order for their printing and postage. Read More

Microsoft’s HelpBridge Is A Virtual, Mobile Disaster Relief Center

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A disaster does not give one time to prepare and usually strikes when it is least expected. You might not be able to avoid a calamity completely, but once you are in the middle of it, timely assistance and some common sense can save countless lives. If you ever find yourself stranded somewhere due to a hurricane or earthquake, the first thing you're bound to do is reach for your cellphone to call for help or to check on your loved ones. It is for such situations that Microsoft has released HelpBridge for iOS (Update: Now available on Android and Windows Phone as well). This useful app lets you create groups of important contacts that you can instantly get in touch with in case of an emergency. The app lets you contact others via Facebook, email and SMS. Apart from being your aid during emergencies, HelpBridge is also a great medium for finding ways you can reach out to others who are in need. Users get recommendations for volunteering and donating to various causes, along with every necessary detail regarding the philanthropic organizations listed in the app. Read More

Jam For iPhone Lets You Create Original Songs In Seconds, Makes You Sound Like A Star

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When apps like Songify and AutoRap were first released, the novelty factor played a big part in their success. Now however, the concept of converting speech into songs is not very new, and an app in this genre needs to have something really special to garner a following of its own. Jam for iPhone seems to have this extra bit of flair. The app offers a lot of styles, rather than concentrating on just hip-hop or pop. You get to decide the category of your song, and Jam processes the singing accordingly. You can even adjust the level of auto-tune you want to add to your singing, while the ‘beats per minute’ factor can be customized as well. Like most apps of this type, Jam has a comprehensive sharing network where all the publicly recorded songs are available for everyone's listening pleasure. Read More

TinPlayer Is A Nifty iOS Media Player With Built-In File Management

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If you've been using iOS for a while now, it's likely the hassle of waiting for iTunes to convert unsupported media files has forced you to look for an alternative to the stock Music and Video apps. There are tons of media players out there that'll let you play a host of formats, but few of them sport as flexible a built-in file manager as does TinPlayer. In addition to basic management features, it allows password protection for individual media files and lets you edit their metadata. The player combines files from your iTunes library and its own storage, has lyrics and subtitles support, easy playlist management and nifty alternative playback controls optimized for one-handed usage. Read More

Similar Movies For iPhone Recommends Films That Match Your Favorites

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There are a lot of services that help you discover music based on your preferences and personal collection, but getting a good movie recommendation is tougher than coming across a nice song. It is possible to browse through IMDb to find a title that has excellent reviews and ratings, but even a highly acclaimed movie might not turn out to be according to your taste. A sure way of avoiding this situation is to get suggestions from your friends who know your preferences and likes, or to ask around if a movie is similar to one you absolutely love. Another way is to use a movie recommendation app like Movie Twist for Android that we recently reviewed. Similar Movies for iPhone is a similar app but with a different way of execution - it acts like a friend that knows everything about all the movies that have ever been released; just tell the app the name of a movie you like, and it'll generate a list of movies similar to it in several ways. Read More

View Trending Stories From Facebook & Twitter With NewsWhip For iOS

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A lot of iOS apps claim to be your best source for all the latest news from around the world. Most of these apps offer staff-picked new stories, meaning users have to rely on the choice of a few individuals. NewsWhip changes that by providing you with news picked by millions of people on social media. The app analyzes the social media sharing stats of news stories to present its users with articles that are hot on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow topics that are trending in any part of the globe, or browse through news based on topics. The app has the ability to retain your usage history, and offers pretty neat sharing options as well. Read More

Snapvoice Is Like Instagram For Photos With Attached Voice Recordings

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Back in October last year, we covered Voicepic, which let you to add a voice clip & effects to your photos, and share them with others. While the app has done reasonably well in the App Store since then, some users might find its eight seconds cap on voice recordings a bit too limiting. When an app is offering you to attach a narrative with your images, you should get the chance to have your say without being rushed too much. This is exactly why the newly released Snapvoice has the potential to garner a healthy fan base of its own. Snapvoice lets you add recordings of up to 90 seconds to a single image, offers some really fantastic photo filters and effects (including tilt-shift), and features a funky, gesture-based method of discovering photos and recordings publicly shared by other Snapvoice users. Read More

Done Not Done Is A Smart iPhone To-Do App For Books, Movies & Music

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A lot of my friends recommend movies and books to me that are really interesting but most of the time, I forget these suggestions pretty quickly. You can always note such suggestions down, but a proper list is always easier to manage than a drab snippet of text. However, it seems a little counter-intuitive to add such recommendations to your reminders. What you need is an app like Done Not Done. Designed for the iPhone, this app acts like a manageable wishlist that keeps track of all the activities you plan to pursue in your free time. In addition to manually entering names of books, movies, songs, audiobooks and other items, you also get recommendations from the app itself based on the activities of your Twitter and Facebook friends. Read More

Glassdoor Brings Its Social Jobs & Career Community To The iPhone

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Most organizations advise their employees to keep their salaries secret from coworkers. When you can’t even know the salary of your own colleagues, imagine how hard it can be to find out the amount a company is likely to offer you if you decide to pursue a job opportunity there. You can sniff around on the internet to get a vague idea of what to expect before you walk in for an interview of course, but there are very few places online where you can easily find the average salaries offered by all the major companies in the world. Fortunately, if you have an iPhone, there is an app for that now. Popular social careers community Glassdoor has released an official client for iOS. Not only does the app offer salary estimates for any organization you are interested in, it also shows you views of people who are presently working there. You get to see pros and cons of various jobs, along with details of all the financial perks that come with a particular position. Read More

40 Best Windows Phone Apps Of 2012

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A lot of people thought that if Windows Phone 7 failed to make an impact in the smartphone market, this might spell the end of Microsoft’s mobile adventure. Contrary to this belief though, 2012 saw the announcement and release of Windows Phone 8. While WP8 is pretty much a whole new OS, you can’t say that it is fundamentally different from its predecessor. Unfortunately, even WP8 hasn’t fared significantly better than Mango so far, but that isn’t from lack of trying on the part of its manufacturers and people who develop apps for the Windows Phone Store. During the course of the year, the platform's app collection grew past the 100,000 mark and is now on its way to even bigger milestones. While some of the releases were rather disappointing, the overall quality of apps in the WP Store definitely seems to have improved compared to what we saw in 2011. Here is a list of the best free Windows Phone apps that were covered here on Addictive Tips in 2012. Read More

Cute CUT: Extremely Powerful Free iOS Video Editor With A Multi-Layer Timeline

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Serious movie making requires a lot of practice and extensive knowledge of multiple applications. Editing a video thoroughly is such a complicated task that you aren't likely to associate it with an iPhone or iPad app, but these views are sure to change once you take Cute CUT for a spin. The app is universal (has dedicated iPhone and iPad variants) and packed with an impressive set of video editing tools, and though it does require a little getting used to, once you do get the hang of it, you'll find it to be an extremely powerful tool. The app lets you combine various media (videos, images, music, sound recordings and built-in sound FX), text and drawings in a multi-layer, non-linear timeline (much like Adobe Premiere) to produce professional-looking videos. More details after the break. Read More

Popular DLNA & Streaming App Skifta Comes To The iPhone & iPad

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MediaMonkey and Skifta are well-known names on Android when it comes to DLNA/UPnP media streaming apps. Maybe it is the presence of AirPlay on iOS that has discouraged developers from coming up with similar apps for the platform, but that doesn't seemed to have stopped Skifta. The now-available iOS variant of the app lets users stream media from iDevices to a computer (or any DLNA-enabled device), or from any DLNA-enabled device to an iPhone or iPad. In addition to the usual DLNA features, Skifta can also be used to stream media directly from your online accounts including Facebook, Instagram, Flickr etc. Setting up Skifta is easy, and if you have ever used a DLNA-based service before, using this app shouldn't be a problem at all. Read More

Yahoo! TimeTraveler For iOS Gets New Interface & Easier Tour Planning

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Yahoo! has recently gone on an iOS spree of sorts, releasing some new apps for its services and giving several existing ones major overhauls. TimeTraveler has become the latest iOS app from Yahoo! to get completely revamped. The app’s recent update has changed its interface completely, bestowing it with a set of controls that makes it much more intuitive than its predecessors. For those of you who aren't familiar with this wonderful service from Yahoo!, TimeTraveler is a trip management app that maps out a complete tour of a city for you according to your preferences. You get navigation instructions, travel tips, time management options and a lot more that can help you get the most out of your visit in the minimum possible time. Read More