Tag: AOLORIGINAL

Using Songbird on your desktop or laptop to listen to your cavernous collection of digital music? Good news -- the Songbird team has been working in "super seekrit" (their words, not ours) on bringing you a pocket-sized version for your Android device. Even better, they've announced the availability of the first public beta of Songbird for Android -- and we took it for a spin. Here's the quick ...

LauncherPro, the fan-favorite Android home screen replacement, has been updated! This is not the much-hyped complete rewrite of the codebase -- that's coming soon! -- but it does bring one of the most-requested features: home screen transitions. Rather than tell you all about them, we've made a video that shows off the four new Compiz-like transitions -- it's embedded after the break. Suffice ...

Hey, Twitter fans! You may remember a debate that sprung up last year about whether Twitter makes an effective tool for social change and grassroots organizing. Well-known author and New Yorker columnist Malcolm Gladwell said no, and Twitter founder Biz Stone wrote a rebuttal defending the service's usefulness to activists. Well, at least one revolution has now been tweeted. Tunisia, the ...

When most people hear the words "vector graphics", the first thing that comes to mind is Adobe Illustrator. While Illustrator is a wonderful application, it's certainly not the only game in town: I've been using CorelDRAW for several years now, and I just love it. I'm not a graphics pro by any stretch of the imagination, but I do need to turn out a few pretty pixels here and there for my day ...

The most popular home screen and 'app drawer' replacement app for Android is LauncherPro -- but I'm not sure why. I mean, sure, it gives you a scrolling dock, and up to seven home screens -- big whoop. Maybe I'm just a bit jaded. I have recently reviewed two very good home screen apps, after all. The truth is, though, except for a nifty scrolling, customizable dock, there's simply no reason to ...

Bundles seem to be all the rage these days, with many different companies offering deep discounts on bundled software. AppSumo's latest Mac OS X bundle aptly named 'Supercharge OS X' does just that, with four small applications that combine to speed up daily usage of a Mac. ...

A lot has been said about safe, secure surfing in recent months. Firesheep brought the necessity for HTTPS (and WPA-encrypted WLAN) into the limelight, and the Gawker Media breach reminded all of us that no one is safe. The truth is, if you want to stay secure on the Web, you have to take a proactive stance. You need to install LastPass or KeePass, and using HTTPSEverywhere is a very good idea ...

Sitting like rough and tawdry monarchs atop of the Android home screen and app launcher pile are LauncherPro and ADW.Launcher. We've reviewed Zeam Launcher, and looked at Go Launcher and QuickDesk, but somehow the two big boys have always escaped our critical eye. Well, no more! Today we're going to look at ADW.Launcher. It's a free download, but there's an 'EX' version that will cost you about ...

Twitter Tuesday took last week off to recover from New Year's celebrations and report on the launch of Twitter for Mac in Apple's Mac App Store, but we're back on the tweet beat this week with the latest news and apps, starting with the interesting case of the U.S. government ordering Twitter to disclose user data. The United States Department of Justice has secured a court order that requires ...

It's always amazed me how phones, with processors that are hundreds of times more powerful than early computers, can lag. You know what I mean: head into your address book and try to find a contact while your phone is still booting up, or loading a website. It's pathetic, really. One solution is to put faster and faster CPUs in phones, but the alternative is to strip out some of the heavier ...

When I listed Gentle Alarm as one of my top Android apps, I promised a more in-depth review -- and here it is! Here are the key features of the app that's been (successfully!) waking me up every morning for the past several weeks. Profiles One of the best concepts in Gentle Alarm is that not all alarms are exactly alike. The Profiles screen lets you set up individual alarm "types". As you can ...

With console-quality iPhone games coming at you left and right these days, it's easy to forget that games like Rolando were the stars of the show a couple of years ago. Now, in the same vein as Rolando, one of our favorite time wasters has made the jump to iOS -- introducing Ramps for iPhone. The premise, like many other popular time waster-style iOS titles is simple: get the rolling smiley ...

Apple's new Mac App Store has finally arrived! With plenty of well-known Mac apps, desktop versions of favorite iPhone and iPad apps, and even some brand new offerings, it's already looking like every Mac user's dream. We're here to walk you through the Mac App Store and show you how it compares to the iOS App Store or the experience of purchasing OS X apps on the web. First things first, ...

What the Zuk is a (very) occasional feature, in which I review software that I have been using for many years, and which is instrumental for my work. These are the first tools I install on every new system, the reliable work-horse applications I turn to for every need. In each installment I will explain what makes this particular program special, and why I find it so vital for my computing ...

2010 has come to a close, and that means it's time for us to kill what little remains of your final Friday productivity with a look back at some of our best Time Wasters. Grab your mouse and keep your eyes peeled for the boss, it's time to fire up some casual gaming goodness in your Web browser! Each screenshot is linked directly to the game pictured -- so when you see something which catches ...