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

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

Kakudo Brings iPad-Like Quick App Switching Gestures To Android

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

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

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

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

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

Track Your Habits, Activities & Work Hours With tenXer For iPhone

The first step towards solving any problem is identifying it. If you feel your life needs some changes but you just can’t put your finger on the problem, there are some apps out there that can help you. The idea of an app helping you get your life back on track might sound a bit too outlandish, but the popularity of apps like Lift and Juice clearly shows how much people can get out of such tools. Both the aforementioned apps, however, are a bit limited because you can’t track everything about your life using them, and the level of automation they offer is close to zero. tenXer, however, has the potential to become a frequently used app on your iPhone by letting you keep an eye on your real-life routine and social media habits. The app can even track your working hours automatically by monitoring your location. Read More

Use Any Photo Or Color As Background For iPhone Notification Banners

BannerImage has not been around in the jailbreak store for too long, but many people are already comparing it to the FlagPaint tweak. The comparison is justified to a large extent, since both tweaks are designed to let users change the appearance of notification banners, but we have to point out that BannerImage takes things to the next level. While FlagPaint renders quite good-looking results, it gets a bit monotonous after a while, since there are only so many colors or styles you can apply to your banners with it. With BannerImage, on the other hand, you get all that, plus the ability to use any image from your iPhone’s camera roll as the background for the banners. Although the newer tweak’s controls don’t look as refined as FlagPaint’s, we have to say that the customization options are certainly better. Read More

Discover Songs & Listen To Your Own Music Collection With Legato For iPhone

exfm and MusicBunk are great music discovery tools but a lot of effort goes into organizing and collecting songs in your local collection, and it seems a bit of a waste to rely solely on online streaming to get your daily dosage of music. Legato is a new iPhone app that is part music player, part music discovery tool. You can view a list of songs that have been played by your friends from their iPhone collection, or just let the world know what your favorite song is these days, simply by playing it in the Legato music player. The songs you discover using the app can be previewed and purchased, and users can also leave feedback on them, thanks to the Legato rating system. Read More

Now Playing Is An Android Music Player With A Google Now-Inspired UI

Some people don’t care much about looks when it comes to music apps on Android and iOS, as long as an entrancing, crisp tune is being injected into their ears. But if you want your apps to be great at both features and looks (as I do), try Now Playing for Android; its Google Now-inspired design might win a point or two from your side. Although it looks simple in comparison to other players available on the Play Store, don't let these simple looks deceive you into thinking it's short on features, because it boasts some really powerful ones of those as well, including an integrated equalizer, album cover art support, automatic lookup for song lyrics and album art, gestures navigation, and more. Read More

Tumblr Gets Revamped Posting Options On iPhone & Web

With the news of Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr still no more than a few hours old, everyone was a little surprised to see the service’s iOS and web versions getting significant updates. Almost certainly though, the updates don’t have anything to do with the acquisition because the new features don’t deal with any additional Yahoo! integration, and the service keeps getting updates pretty regularly anyway. The focus in both the updates seems to be on enhancing the user experience and offering a better interface. This doesn't mean, however, that the main Tumblr UI has been overhauled. The changes have mostly occurred in the options that deal with posting new content to Tumblr blogs. On the web, you get a much cleaner ‘compose’ box for text posts, and a photo upload dialog that support drag-and-drop. For iPhone users, the app might appear unchanged at first glance, but when you try to compose a new post, a revamped selection list for post types shows up. Read More

Flickr Gets New Web, Android App Design, Cover Photos & 1TB Free Space

Flickr is a treasure trove of amazing photos. Comprising of stunning collections of original shots as well as stunning digital art created by its users, the service is one of the largest online picture collections you will find, and it has just been redesigned. I for one think it’s about time too; visiting Flickr in the past always made me ask myself why it was still the year 2000 on Flickr, but Yahoo has finally given the service a much needed makeover. The interface is now image-focused and instead of the tiny (and occasionally ineligible) text, you have an infinitely scrolling stream of images from your contacts as well as your own albums. There's a new image viewer as well, and the service now offers you one terabyte of storage space, saving and viewing photos in full resolutions, and a very handy little tool that tells you just how many full resolution images you can fit into a terabyte based on their resolution. Flickr’s new design isn't exactly unique or unconventional; it’s done what most image sharing services did a while back and plastered its background with images. Though regardless, it's still a major improvement.. Read More

Smart Launcher For Android Boasts A Fast, Minimal Yet Beautiful UI

While many people buy a smartphone to run apps, check emails, surf the internet (and make phone calls too), it’s the customization factor of Android that really shines and give it an advantage over the likes of iOS and Windows Phone. When we speak of customization, it’s not just merely changing the wallpaper or swapping the Message icon, but the complete interface overhaul that third-party Android launchers bring with them. Smart Launcher Special is a new Android launcher based on the already popular Smart Launcher and Smart Launcher Pro, and has recently gone free in the Google Play Store as a limited time offer. The app brings with it all the features of the Pro variant and is being offered free for a limited time. For more details, read on. Read More

Remotely Track & Control Your Lost Or Stolen iPhone With inner

Anyone who takes security seriously, or has had a mobile phone snatched from them in the past, might already be using apps like Prey on their smartphone. Prey is arguably the most popular anti-theft solution available on iOS and Android but if you own a jailbroken iDevice, there are also some less feature-rich yet effective alternatives to the Prey app out there. ICaughtU might not track your stolen device for you, but it can be used to get a photo of the thief. There is certainly a lot of potential in Cydia apps when it comes to countering phone theft, and inner demonstrates that quite clearly. This app has a ton of features, which make sure that every base is covered in case your phone gets stolen. inner can spring into action automatically when an unauthorized SIM is placed in the device, and also allows you to send commands to your phone remotely using the app’s desktop companion. Read More

myQuests Is A Great Gesture-Based iPhone Project Manager For Teams

It is a common practice among developers these days to make to-do list apps that rely heavily on gestures and color-coding. Clear kicked off this trend, but more recently we have seen similar concepts implemented in apps like Listacular. Since the whole point of using gestures in a task manager is to make it uncomplicated, these apps aren't too heavy on features. The new myQuests though, clearly shows that it is possible for an app to be feature-rich without making things too tangled up. The app can prove to be a great tool for project management, specially when you have to work in a group, because it lets users share tasks with others, and has an elaborate commenting system of its own that can be used to stay up to speed with all the latest happenings regarding any to-do list or individual task. Read More

Export All Media Files Sent Or Received In iOS Messages App From One Place

Just the other day, while testing the tweaks that allow users to attach long videos with their iMessage and MMS, I realized that for anyone who texts a lot, finding media files in the Messages app is a real headache. Even the search feature in the stock Messages app is limited, and only works for parts of threads that have been loaded manually. In this situation, a section maintaining a collection of all media files saved in the Messages app might have been really useful. Since no such feature exists in iOS, the Cydia store has a pretty decent solution up its sleeve. MediaExport is a Cydia app that shows photos and videos saved in all of your message threads. You can then save these files to the camera roll, or share them using the service of your choice. Read More

Get Update & Price Drop Notifications For Any iOS App With Apps Notifier

Ever since Apple started its crackdown on app discovery tools, vendors have started coming up with ingenious ways of slipping past the stringent App Store scrutiny, and pushing out apps that might help you in keeping your iPhone interesting. A few days back, we covered AppShopper Social that adds a dash of user-collaboration to app discovery. Push notifications are an important part of any app like AppShopper, but there are other tools available for different platforms that are designed to work in the background, and only alert users whenever there is something worth checking out in the app collection. For Android, Amazon App Notifier serves a similar purpose, whereas iPhone owners can now give the new Apps Notifier a shot. You just have to add your favorite apps to the Apps Notifier watch list, and then wait for any updates or price drops to come along. There's is no need to even repeatedly come back to the app, since it is based almost completely on push notifications. Read More

Popular Twitter & Tumblr Mashup Pheed Comes To Android

If you’re keeping a tab on the social media sides of things, you might already be aware of Pheed. It’s a social network service launched back in October last year as a web app, followed by an iOS client in November. Since then, has become quite popular, attracting users' attention from around the globe – specifically teens and youngsters. The service is primarily designed for sharing a variety of creative content such as photos, videos, audio and text with other Pheed users . In addition, it allows you to subscribe to a multitude of channels that suit your taste in order to discover content created by other users of the service. Although it was released on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad only, Pheed has now landed on Android as well. Lets take a closer look at the Android app of the service. Read More

Vobok For iOS & Android Is Like Twitter For Short Voice Recordings

On the surface, Twitter’s 140 character limit might seem like a hindrance, but in reality, this feature has helped make Twitter the social networking giant that it is today. The limit helps keep tweets interesting, and makes sure that people can easily go through their timeline even if they follow a large number of profiles. Vobok is a social network for smartphones that works on the same idea of intentional limitation, but instead of written words or links, Vobok focuses on audio. The app has been designed to let users record short voice messages, and then share them with their friends and followers. Even private messages can only be sent in audio form, making the whole network voice-based. In the past, Audiolip has offered a similar functionality for desktop, while mobile users have had VoiceBo. Vobok still has its own special place in this genre though, owing to the fact that it is a no-frills app, and enjoys integration with Facebook and Twitter. Read More

Keep Track Of Who Follows & Unfollows You On Vine From iPhone

There are plenty of tools for all platforms that can be used to manage your followers on Twitter. On one hand, there are services that let you trim down the list of people you follow, while other apps raise the alarm as soon as someone tries to quietly unfollow you. As Vine is still not too old, we haven’t seen a lot of similar services for it just yet. Another contributing factor might be Vine’s iOS-exclusiveness. Thankfully though, now there is a very uncomplicated way of finding out if someone has recently unfollowed you on Vine, or if that’s just your paranoia kicking in. Followers on Vine is not a feature-rich app by any means, but it is enough to let Vine users keep track of their followers if they are conscious about keeping their Follower/Following ratio in a certain range. The app can also be used to find the people you follow who aren't following you back on Vine, and even see a special list of your new followers. Read More

Hipstamatic Oggl For iPhone Is Like Instagram, And Then Some

After Twitter’s introduction of photo filters of its own, one might make the case that the future of standalone photo editors for smartphones is not too bright. For now, however, there are some things that just can’t be done without the help of apps that have been designed specifically for the purpose of tweaking photos. When it comes to third-party image editing apps, Hipstamatic is not a new name in the game. We have already seen some really good photo-related apps from Hipstamatic, including the popular IncrediBooth and Hipstamatic Disposable. That hasn't stopped the vendor from spotting room for more, and has come up with the new Hipstamatic Oggl. This app supports both real-time filters and post-capture editing. The main feature of Oggl, though, is its ability to let users combine different filters and lenses to come up with unique results. It is also possible to snap photos of your own using the exact filter combos used in any of the photos publicly shared by others. Read More

Hands-On With Google Hangouts Unified, Cross-Platform IM & Video Chat

The Google I/O keynote yesterday brought a lot of important announcements, but the revamped Hangouts service seems to have managed to cause the most excitement among them all so far, probably because it has already been rolled out for users all over the world. The iOS app is available in the App Store, while  lot of Android users have managed to get their hands on the Hangouts update for their Google Talk app as well. Google already offered its Google Talk (also called GTalk, Google Chat and Gmail Chat) already enjoyed integration with Google+ and Gmail but compared to the Hangouts feature of Google+, it wasn't too heavy on features. Some of you might have wondered why the plain old chat can’t become as cool as its Google+ variant. Even if you have never thought of that possibility, Google seems to have been thinking along those lines. The new Hangouts can be considered a consolidation of Google Talk and Google+ Hangouts that works on Android, iOS, Google+ and Chrome. The service offers everything from video calling to group chat, and even a huge collection of emoticons. Read More