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Anything “mini” seems to be so popular these days. We have mini cars (think Mini Cooper), mini animal breeds (think toy poodles and Chihuahuas), and even mini candies (think miniature Snickers, etc.) Did you know there is such a thing as mini Android browsers? You may have come across one of them in the Play Store and thought the same thing I did the first time I saw one: “What in the world is a mini browser and what would you use it for?”
With so many social networks and cloud storage services out there, it can become ridiculously hard to manage them all. Many of us are trying to be everywhere at once, while others just wish everyone else would make up their minds where the best virtual hangout is. Some are torn between their Facebook and Twitter friends, or can’t decide whether to post that photo on Instagram or Photobucket. It can all become overwhelming very fast.
Fortunately, a number of developers have had these same thoughts and aimed to help consolidate your life in the cloud. There are apps that help you post to multiple networks at the same time, apps that let you see all your friends social activity in one place, apps that help you collaborate with colleagues regardless of what tools they choose, and even apps to help you keep your own content in order. This post will highlight a few of these to help you make the most of your life in the cloud.
Facebook is, by far, the world’s most popular social network and a client of some sort is a staple part of any user’s application library. With increasingly public lives and an obligation to keep up one’s online presence, having the best social networking clients available is a vital aspect of any mobile activity.
Your options for a stellar Facebook client are not few, but official and third-party apps differ in a number of key areas, such as design and interface, functionality, user reception, etc. Today, we’re going to round up some of our favourite Facebook clients, Facebook, FriendCaster and Fast, by pitting them against each other on a number of these key aspects.
Your Android tablet comes pre-installed with a browser that, for most, is a clean and efficient way to access webpages. It certainly does the job well, but there are many instances when you might need something else, maybe more speed or options, so you’ll be looking into alternatives. There’s a variety of both first and third-party Android browser, including the well-received Chrome for Android.
In this roundup, we’ll take a look at a handful of the tablet-optimised browsers available for you on the Google Play store.
Nowadays, the majority of us have moved away from the traditional newspaper and started using the internet to get updated on the latest happenings in politics, business, entertainment and other fields. Our current generation would rather read an electronic copy than the paper, but a phone’s screen is too small, therefore anyone who has a tablet prefers using that for their daily dose of news.
In this roundup, I’ll cover my favorite news apps which are optimized for Android tablets. These are distributed into five different topics: General News, Regional News, Tech, Lifestyle, and News Aggregators.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve heard of reddit - a social news site that thrives on user generated content and conversations. “redditors” submit links, images or simply text messages on subsets of the site called sub-reddits, and earn points based on how many up or down votes the story gets. The conversations on reddit are probably some of the best on the web and are the reason the site has millions of users completely hooked.
Although reddit clients were a little slow coming to Android – I struggled to find a few good ones just last year – the scenario is quite the opposite now and one is spoilt for choice when it comes to getting the reddit dose on an Android phone or tablet. Here’s my list of some of the best reddit clients on Android, and although all of these apps are free and mostly ad-supported, I’ve included links to their pro versions whenever available.
Over the last couple of years that I’ve had a smartphone, I’ve steadily moved my news reading routine from the desktop over to the phone. It wasn’t the best of experiences on the tiny screen of my old LG Optimus One, but the HD screen on the Galaxy Nexus does make it extremely good at scanning through a news article so I can decide whether to mark it to read later on a bigger screen.
The other big change in news consumption over the last couple of years has been the shift from traditional RSS readers to dedicated apps that do a much better job of collating and presenting updates. While Flipboard took its own sweet time to arrive on Android, a host of competing services – including one from Google – attempted to grab and lock in those users looking for a simple, elegant yet gorgeous way to consume their daily dose of content updates.
Having played around with a bunch of these apps, I’ll share my take on how they work out for me. I’ll avoid the usual RSS readers and Google Reader front-ends here, and go with the top three — in my opinion — dedicated news reading apps on Android at this moment: Flipboard, Google Currents & Pulse. Rather than talk about each app individually, I’ll discuss how they all fare on some of the most important features.
Social media has been a fundamental part of life on the Internet since before the rise of the tablet, therefore being one of the natural categories of apps on such devices. As no one wants to sever all their social connections just because they’ve decided to jump onto their tablet, in this article, we’ll take a look at some of the best social apps available for your Android tablet.
Twitter is awesome. Google+ is great for photographs and deep discussions from geeks of all kinds – and it has a fantastic Android app – but Twitter is still the king when it comes to quick bites of info, breadth vs. depth, and commentary on what’s happening right now.
Here’s a collection of Android enthusiasts that I enjoy following on Twitter. I hope you find a few new tweeps to follow, and I hope you’ll share your favourites with me, too!
There is such a mind-boggling range of Android Twitter apps out there that it is extremely difficult to decide between them, even if you download every single one and try them out. Each Twitter client offers a range of different features and interfaces, and choosing just one is hard.
Picking the best Twitter client for you is going to depend on what you want to use it for. If you are a passive Twitter user and simply want to read other people’s tweets, then you’ll want a nice, simple to use client with no fancy features – however if you, like me, are an active Twitter user, then you’ll certainly want a client with a few nice features stashed away under the bonnet.
To save you trawling through the Market for hours on end, here’s a roundup of seven of the best Twitter clients for Android devices, with a bit of information about each one. Let’s explore! (more…)
