Posts Tagged
cloud
A while back I did a roundup of Multimedia App for Android Tablets. You may have noticed that missing from that list were music apps, but fear not; I have not forgotten about music apps — as a matter of fact I love music. There are so many great music apps for Android tablets that instead of lumping them in with other multimedia apps, we decided to dedicate a roundup strictly to them. Here, we’re going to look at streaming, discovery, syncing, and even playing apps that work very well on your Nexus 7, 10 or other Android tablet.
When you want to print a photo or other files that you have stored on your Android, how do you go about it? You could email a copy of the file to yourself and then print it out from your computer, but this seems like an unnecessarily lengthy process. You can connect your phone to your computer but… argh! Where has the USB cable gone?
If you’re yet to discover Cloud Print, this is an app that could be the answer to your printing problems. It enables you to print images and other documents from your phone or tablet without the need to connect to your computer. Read on to find out how it could help you.
SoundCloud is a social community for musicians and DJs around the world to listen, record, and share their work across the internet. Like Twitter, you can follow and be followed by your fellow artists, but if you’re a fan, you can just follow your idols and even communicate with them.
The Android Market is booming. Amazon’s own Android Appstore is giving away a free paid app every day. AT&T has reversed their position on installing apps from unknown sources. Apps like PicPlz and Socialcam make it easy to create and share video with your friends. The bottom line is, there is just not enough space on your average Android device to keep up. Never fear, the cloud is here! Rather than upgrading your storage, here are a few apps and services that you can use right now to help you offload your data to the cloud and extend your device’s capabilities.
Media has certainly been the focus for Android developers recently. Android has always been lagging behind iOS in terms of media capability, but given the recent increase in media apps available for the platform and Google’s recent Google Music announcement, it seems that they are finally pulling their finger out and trying to beat Apple off the top spot. Android is still a long way away – there is still nothing equivalent to the iTunes Store available for Android and media still isn’t as integrated as on iOS (I’m talking about syncing capabilities, which can still be a little bit hit-and-miss with Android) – but at least the cogs are starting to turn.
Instinctiv aims to simplify this by making the music on your PC/Mac available on your phone without having to transfer it. In short, it is a wireless music player which, according to the app’s description, promises “a better music experience for Android”. This is similar to other apps in the Market, such as doubleTwist’s AirSync, however Instinctiv is completely free (for the time being anyway). I decided to give it a go – read on for my full review. (more…)
I love the cloud. Last month I factory-reset my phone, and all my emails and Market-bought apps downloaded back on to it automatically. When I switch computers, Chrome will set itself up with all my bookmarks and passwords. And I don’t know what I’d do without Evernote giving me remote access to every thought I’ve written down and website I’ve clipped over the past few years.
The cloud is fantastic — and yet it’s flawed. What happens if I need to read something stored there while I’m on a long underground journey? Or if I’ve got a 300MB file but am on a slow Internet connection? Or when the server storing my entire MP3 collection goes down? Sometimes you can’t beat portable storage. But I don’t want to carry a USB hard drive around with me all the time…
Enter the Atrix. (more…)
I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but lately there’s been a lot of focus on this “cloud” thing and how everyone is getting in on it. Whether you’re a student, businessman, or someone who works from home, you can find a reason to use an online storage service to put your files in “the cloud.”
Recently over at Web.Appstorm, I did write ups on both Amazon CloudPlayer and Amazon CloudDrive, stating that it’s great that CloudPlayer integrates with Android devices, but wishing CloudDrive would offer something similar to what Dropbox offers — a multi-platform app so that you can easily sync files. What occured to me while telling my students about CloudDrive was that there is no way to share files. Luckily, DroidCloud fills both of these voids.
Over the last couple of years, Dropbox has quickly become one of the stellar file storage and synchronization services that every computer or mobile enthusiast knows and uses religiously. The idea is simple: 2GB free of storage, upgradable, applications for Windows and Mac OSX, and an effortless sync process between many devices. Dropbox also has an Android application on the Market, but everyone who has used the service knows that its power can be pushed way beyond what that official software offers.
Here, we will take a look at 11 different utilities, in varying categories, that make the most of Dropbox’ seamless cloud synchronization and help you keep everything neatly backed up and available on multiple devices. Where possible, we will mention similar applications that fit in the same category and also work with Dropbox.
It’s been a good month for fans of Amazon and Android. Last week the Amazon Appstore was opened, and this week sees the launch of Amazon Cloud Player for Android, an app which lets you store your personal music collection in the cloud and access it on your phone, without having to connect to your computer’s library.
We’ve been expecting to see similar technologies from either Apple or Google for a long time, but there are still no clear signs on the horizon. So, has Amazon scooped the big two, or should we keep waiting for the manufacturers to get around to building their own services?
