Tag Archives: featured

[Ask The Readers] Physical Or Virtual: Which Android Smartphone Key Layout Do You Prefer?

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The first Android smartphone – the HTC “Dream” – came with a trackball and five hard buttons on the front: home, menu, back, call accept and call decline. Though as Android has evolved over the years, so have handsets running the OS and by now, we have lost the trackball and phone call buttons. In 2011, Google announced Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich running on the Galaxy Nexus, which used virtual buttons Back, Home and Multitasking Tray, along with on-screen menu buttons that only show when required, replacing their hardware counterpart. Read More

Here Are Some Great Velox Add-Ons To Spruce Up Your iPhone Home Screen

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Velox hasn’t been in the Cydia store for even a month yet, but the tweak has made a huge impact on the jailbreak scene. Everyone expected a few add-ons to come out for Velox but nobody had the idea that in less than a month, the Cydia store would be bursting with extensions for the tweak. Velox already works with most of the stock apps but thanks to these third-party add-ons, you can now get a modified versions of your favorite Velox widgets for even the third-party apps installed on your iPhone, and make the tweak handle them. With so many of these add-ons available in the Cydia store, it has become a bit of a nightmare to find the exact extension you want. Searching in Cydia only yields a rather confusing mix of Velox-related themes and add-ons, so we decided to compile a list to help users who want to get the most out of this awesome tweak. Read More

Best Apps, Tips & Tweaks Of The Week [05.19.2013]

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It’s that time of the week again when we round up the most popular as well as the less-popular but useful apps, tips and tweaks that you may have missed during your hectic workweek. This time around, we discuss announcements made at Google I/O 2013, Cydia for Android, Hipstamatic’s take on Instagram, and an unreal file manager for Windows, among other excellent apps and tips. Read More

Google Play Music All Access: What It’s About & How It Works

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Google finally unveiled its much anticipated music subscription service yesterday; while the service was still just a rumor, the general opinion about it was that it would give services like Spotify and Rdio a run for their money. The service is called Google Play Music All Access and as the name suggests, it has been built as a subscription-access component of the existing Google Play Music service, which has itself been revamped interface-wise as well. It’s currently available in the US only, and comes with a one month free trial, after which it'll cost $7.99 per month to those who sign up by June 30, and $9.99 per month after that. Subscribers will be able to listen to the thousands of songs available on Google Play without having to purchase individual tracks. Read More

A Detailed Look At The New Google+ With Card-Based UI, Hangouts, Awesome Photo Tweaks & More

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Yesterday at Google’s I/O conference, the tech giant announced its much anticipated Music subscription service, revamped Google Maps, and the redesigned Google+. For most of us, Google+ failed to replace Facebook and the many comparisons drawn between the two services failed to sway users in favor of Google's offering. Soon after its debut last year, many of us had discounted it as another failed social network from the search giant. Google, on the other, has not conceded and has been making small improvements as well as significant new additions like Communities to the social network. The latest design is very Pinterest-like; the left bar can now be hidden, making it less of a screen hog. It’s also been cleaned up a bit and the ‘Explore’ option has been replaced with ‘What’s Hot’. Those who didn't like the two-column Timeline view that Facebook introduced might not like the new Google+ layout, which is divided into not even two but three columns. Read More

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

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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

A Look At The New Features In Firefox 21

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The next installment of Firefox i.e. version 21 is now available. The new version brings something for both end users and developers alike. For users who are conscious about their privacy or wondering why their browser is running so slow, Firefox 21 will be a welcome update. Mozilla has added three different settings to its Do Not Disturb feature, as well as a ‘Health Report’ that collects information on how your browser is performing. The health report can be checked any time, and a third feature will use the data gathered by the report to tell you if your browser’s startup time is getting effected due to its health or not. Developers will be pleased to learn about the new Remote Target profiling feature that allows them to connect devices running either Firefox Mobile or Firefox OS to the desktop browser and view them in a separate Developer Tools window of their own. Read More

[Giveaway] Play PC Racing Games With Your Android Or iPhone Using Tilt Racer

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Though the trusty old keyboard and mouse combo works well for almost all PC games, the avid PC gamer never settles for anything less than what fits each genre the best, like the arcade fighting stick does fighting games and the Sidewinder does the racing genre. However, if your enthusiasm for PC games isn't at the point where you'd want to spend the dough required to buy a separate controller, you can always settle for using your smartphone or tablet as one. There are now more than just a couple virtual gamepad apps available for both Android and iOS; some meant for all genres - such as DroidPad and WiFiPad - and others, like FlyPad for iPhone, that are focused on racing games. New to the market, Tilt Racer for Android and iOS aims to improve upon the latter with a better control scheme. Join us past the break to learn what it has to offer. Read More

[Giveaway] MacKeeper Is An All-In-One System Maintenance & Security Tool For OS X

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We’ve covered a lot of small tools that help you clean up your Mac, make it run smoother, securely delete files, recover deleted file, or search for them. Though OS X does most - if not all - of these things natively, it doesn't offer as many customization options, or work as well as several third-party offerings. You can always look for apps that are meant to solve individual problems, or you could invest in an app that does everything for the right price. MacKeeper is a very famous app that acts as an antivirus and anti-theft app for your Mac. It also lets you encrypt data, recover deleted files, securely shred files, create backups, remove junk files, find duplicates, estimate the disk usage and break it down for you, uninstall apps and the many files they can sometimes leave behind, help you optimize start-up apps, and edit the default apps for different file extensions. Read More

What Is TWRP Recovery & How To Install & Use It On Android Devices [Guide]

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Till just over a year back, ClockworkMod (aka CWM) was the go-to custom recovery for pretty much every mainstream Android device. Things have changed a lot since, with a newer player entering the game and gaining a lot of critical acclaim, as well as a huge user base. TeamWin Recovery Project – or TWRP for short – is a fully touch-based custom recovery that was initially developed for Nexus devices, but has since been made available for countless other smartphones and tablets as well, in form of both official and third-party builds. Just like we took you through a very detailed tour of ClockworkMod recovery and its features, we’re going to guide you through all the features of TWRP right after the jump. Read More

How To Change iOS App Icons Without Jailbreak [Guide]

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Apple's mobile operating system isn't exactly known or praised for offering users a lot of control. In fact it is notorious for being a walled garden, with Apple pretty much enforcing upon users what it thinks is right, and not giving them many options to tweak it to make it suit their individual needs best. Without jailbreak, iOS offers significantly limited customization when compared to Android; you can’t replace the keyboard, switch to a different launcher, customize app icons… or can you? Yes, we've come across a method that allows you to change the appearance of your app icons without fondling saurik’s beard! Check it out after the jump. Read More

Hands-On With The New Features In Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail

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Staying loyal to its release cycle, Canonical has recently released the latest version of the world’s most popular Linux distribution – Ubuntu 13.04. Dubbed ‘Raring Ringtail’, this release brings with it a bunch of new features, along with several significant improvements to many existing ones. Just a couple of months back, we got to take Ubuntu’s under-development mobile OS, Ubuntu Touch Preview for a spin and were left fairly impressed. While not to be considered a major revamp of the last version, the operating system’s latest desktop release hasn’t been a disappointment either, improving significantly upon its predecessor. In what follows, we will take a look at some of the new features and improvements in Ubuntu 13.04. Read More

10 Great Chrome Extensions For Twitter

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Twitter is a very engaging network; you can open your timeline and before you know it, you've spent the better part of an hour reading links or conversing (read: debating trolls). For this and several other reasons, many users prefer Twitter clients over the web interface. Most Twitter clients not only have better features, but also support notifications for your @mentions, direct messages etc. At the same time, they give you control over the content you see, ensuring that only important things disrupt your work. The problem is that Twitter likes to axe the abilities of third-party Twitter clients by restricting its API, and many users have to turn to its web interface whether they like it or not. It’s situations like this when extensions can be very handy. Provided you have the right ones installed, your browser can act like an impressive Twitter client itself, and we've compiled a list of extensions for Chrome that will help you do just that. Read More

Best Free Reddit Apps For iPhone, iPod touch And iPad

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Reddit is the world’s most popular social news and entertainment website today, with billions of monthly pageviews and unique visitors. Now, a majority of these visitors use the desktop website, but an important fraction of them use their smartphones and tablets to get their daily doze of reddit on the go. With that in mind, we’ll be discussing five of the best reddit apps/clients for your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. If you happen to own an Android device, we've still got you covered with our list of the best reddit apps for Android. Read More

[Giveaway] Visio Touch: View, Annotate & Share MS Visio Files On iPhone & iPad

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The iPad already has tools like xPlan that let users create elaborate Gantt charts and flow diagrams without requiring access to a computer, but having an app of this kind is not the same as being able to import files from a standard desktop tool. Most people create block diagrams and flowcharts using MS Visio, but just like the rest of the Office suite, Microsoft still hasn't introduced its iOS app so far. Things are not completely hopeless though, as the App Store does offer a convenient way of viewing and annotating VSD and VSDX files on iPhone and iPad. Visio Touch makes it really easy for iDevice owners to import Visio files in a number of ways and convert these diagrams to PDFs for easy sharing. Read More

[Ask The Readers] HTC Sense vs. Samsung TouchWiz: Which Android Manufacturer Skin Do You Like More?

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Last week, we asked our readers about which flagship smartphone they liked more: the trend-smashing, beautifully designed HTC One with its 4MP “UltraPixel” camera, or the more flexible Galaxy S4 with its microSD card support, removable battery and more interesting software features. The HTC One came first with 564 votes, but only very slightly – as the GS4 was right behind it with 486 (46%) votes. Our previous poll was more or less focused on the hardware aspect of these phones. In today’s Ask The Readers feature, we discuss the custom skins running on top of them – HTC Sense and Samsung TouchWiz. Read More

Hands-On With Twitter #Music For Web & iOS [Review]

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Twitter’s much anticipated music app is now live, featuring both a web interface and an iOS app. The web interface is slowly being made available to Twitter users in the US, UK, and Australia. As expected, Twitter has also launched an iOS app for its music service called Twitter #music. You can expect hashtags to play an important part in this app. It connects with your Twitter account and gives you suggestions for music based on the artists that you follow, what’s currently trending, and what the people you follow are listening to. You can listen to the iTunes preview of different tracks right inside the app, and the tracks can be bought on iTunes. You will be able to connect your Spotify and Rdio accounts with Twitter #music and listen to full tracks. You can also tweet the tracks you’re listening to; the #nowplaying hashtag is added to those tweet automatically. Read More

[Giveaway] Kestrel GX: Elegant, Feature-Rich Photo Manager & Editor For Windows

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Back in 2010, we covered a feature-rich photo manager for Windows called Kestrel GX. It was unarguably one the most elegant image management applications that we had come across, not only because of its sophisticated design but also because of its slew of handy features. Unfortunately, since last year, the application is no longer available for free and has been replaced by a paid variant that carries hefty price tags of $59 and $89 for home and commercial licenses respectively. Here's where you being a regular reader at AddictiveTips pays off. Details past the break. Read More