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“Music” is quite the cluttered category these days on mobile devices – there are the old school music players, radio apps, editing apps and then some creation apps. On the gaming front, the competition is pretty light with a few variations of Guitar Hero style gameplay and not much else. I’m not into the whole guitar-chord-busting genre, but one game that brought back memories of my childhood piano lessons is Smule’s Magic Piano.
If the developer’s name sounds somewhat familiar, you’ve probably heard of their Ocarina app on iPhone a few years back that caused quite a stir with its unique approach to creating music by blowing into the iPhone’s microphone. After a spate of ground breaking and successful apps on iOS and the excellent Songify on Android, they finally decided to bring Magic Piano over to Android. Having craved to see something like the Ocarina on Android, I decided to give Magic Piano a go and here’s what I came back thinking.
Planning a holiday can be a momentous job. For the trip to be a success, everything needs to be planned and all the costs have to be accounted for. And if anything is forgotten, disaster and disappointment could rear their ugly head. Another big problem is overpricing – many people try to avoid paying too much for anything while planning their trips. Enter Kayak which aims to solve these problems.
Transferred over from the highly successful website, Kayak is now available on Android in both tablet and phone form. This thorough and well-made application is, in my opinion, one of the best holiday planners around.
One of the most important reasons I decided to buy a Samsung Galaxy S3, instead of waiting for the new Nexus device, was that given the popularity of the Galaxy brand, there were bound to be hundreds of custom ROMs developed for it. See, if there was an AA group for customization addicts, I’d be standing there now and introducing myself, “Hello, my name is Rita and I’m an addict.”
For about 2 months after getting the S3, I gave Samsung the benefit of the doubt, restraining myself to their own ICS flavor. However, the delay in official Jelly Bean’s arrival on my device and the itch to try something new finally pushed me over the edge. So I set out searching for custom ROMs and I looked at CyanogenMod first, a long-time favorite. But it was either a choice between a stable ICS — isn’t that what I was running away from? — with CM9, or a nightly Jelly Bean with CM10 and many bugs still plaguing it.
Then I widened my horizons, downloaded about 10 different ROMs and ended up on FoxHound, a surprisingly awesome custom ROM that ticked so many boxes for me. Here are the reasons I fell in love with it and decided to use it as a daily driver.
It’s National Novel Writing Month once again, time to challenge yourself to write 50000 words in 30 days, no easy feat! But with your Android device by your side, you can keep working on your novel or non-fiction book anywhere and anytime. Throughout this week, we’ll share our best apps, thoughts, and tips to help you achieve that writing goal.
As any writer knows, focus is absolutely key, and unnecessary distractions can really hurt the workflow. Most word processors are filled with bulky features that aren’t needed except for special projects that require formatting or tables. This means that they can easily distract from the primary purpose of the app.
Writer recognizes these aspects and strives to provide the most efficient writing experience possible on Android. It is an extremely simple word processing app that is designed to keep you submersed in your writing.
It’s National Novel Writing Month once again, time to challenge yourself to write 50000 words in 30 days, no easy feat! But with your Android device by your side, you can keep working on your novel or non-fiction book anywhere and anytime. Throughout this week, we’ll share our best apps, thoughts, and tips to help you achieve that writing goal.
About a month ago, I considered purchasing a tablet because it’d enable me to write anywhere without having to carry around my bulky 17″ laptop, which is great for editing photographs and video on location but not so great for a quick article or blog post. Armed with a new Nexus 7, I decided to start taking my writing outdoors for a change of scene and some fresh air.
The next step in becoming mobile while working was finding a way to type efficiently on my tablet. The Nexus 7 ships with the stock Android Jelly Bean keyboard, which is nice enough but not nearly as flexible as I’d like. So when I began looking for a replacement keyboard, I found Thumb Keyboard to be a compelling choice because of its new approach to improving the two-handed typing experience. It looked to be just what I needed to turn my 7″ tablet into a killer writing device. Here is my experience with it so far.
It’s National Novel Writing Month once again, time to challenge yourself to write 50000 words in 30 days, no easy feat! But with your Android device by your side, you can keep working on your novel or non-fiction book anywhere and anytime. Throughout this week, we’ll share our best apps, thoughts, and tips to help you achieve that writing goal.
One of the most important aspects of writing – especially long form writing like reports, stories, novels, etc. – is the organization and structuring of content. A lot of people use long lists and sub-lists but unfortunately, for a lot of visually inclined people like myself, this gets ugly and out of control very quickly. I can’t get myself to make any sense of content until I can spatially organize everything for an at-a-glance overview.
One of the best ways to do this is to create mind maps. To quote Wikipedia, “A mind map is a diagram used to visually outline information”. I’ve been creating mind maps for years now, for everything from organizing my financial details to preparing project plans and even content outlines for blog posts like this one. The excellent open source app Freemind was my weapon of choice and has stuck with me, not the least for lack of alternatives. Many online and offline mind mapping apps were available, but none seemed to do the job well enough. So when Mindjet, one of the better commercial desktop mind mapping apps out there, released their Android version for free, I was excited.
It’s Christmas day 2004, I’m slouched over the family budget PC, CRT screen and all. My blurry vision can’t tell if Flight Simulator is installing or has frozen. The computer’s tower revs and whirrs under the strain – barely possessing the required memory and processing power to handle such a beast of a game — stored on two disks if memory serves me right!
Flight Simulator gave me hours of joy. There was something invigorating about a virtual flight in snowy conditions from Heathrow to Keflavík. I’d often sit with a cup of tea – periodically adjusting course, checking fuel or praying autopilot would handle the turbulence so I wouldn’t have to.
The fact that I can now enjoy a similar thrill on my Galaxy Tab 2 thanks to the guys over at Laminar labs is a testament to their hard work on the X Plane 9 series and to modern mobile hardware. Thirteen year old me would nosedive at the sight of this bad boy. And no Joystick required!
We’ve been talking for years about going paperless in every sphere of our lives, but the reality is we’re not quite there yet — printed receipts, cheques, forms, and business cards are still very much an intricate part of our existence. And let’s not forget our notebooks, napkins and sketch pads. That being said, it’s always worth taking steps towards relying less on paper — going digital helps the environment and makes information easier to manage too.
That is why Genius Scan is a handy app to have on your home screen. It allows you to scan any printed matter using your device’s camera and save it for easy archival and reference. Whether you’re prone to misplacing documents or need to quickly gather notes for your next research paper, Genius Scan can be of great assistance.
There are numerous apps for photo editing in the Play Store, most of which apply filters and other enhancements to give images a makeover. There are a few, however, that offer a combination of motion and still photos to create an intriguing animated image. These are popularly called “cinemagraphs”, a way of isolating a specific motion within an image and playing it repeatedly to create a moving photograph. One of the few apps for making cinemagraphs is fotodanz and it certainly can make your photos dance and bring them to life.
BitTorrent is as popular, if not even more so, than ever. You’re probably familiar with the idea of using torrent to quickly download large files, even if this is not something you choose to indulge in.
uTorrent for Android enables you to make the move from desktop torrenting to mobile torrenting. The app is currently in beta so I thought I’d take a quick look to see how things are shaping up. The desktop version of uTorrent is my default client, so I was intrigued to see how it compares.
