Eric Ravenscraft
Eric is a snarky technophile with a taste for the unusual. When he's not obsessing about Android, you can usually find him obsessing about movies, psychology, or the perfect energy drink. Eric weaves his own special blend of snark, satire, and comedy into all his articles.

04
Sep
whitehousetiny

White House App Gets Overhauled, Now Supports Tablets, Includes Search And Live Video Functions

Posted by in Applications, News

Hey, did you guys know there's an election coming soon? I know, it's been a pretty low-profile thing, but it's true. Of course, we want to be a well-informed electorate, right? One source of information that should probably be watched to achieve that goal is the White House. Today, the administration of the most powerful office in the country revealed a newly-designed app that will allow mobile users to watch live presidential events, search its stable of blog posts, videos, and press releases, and in a forward-thinking move, makes all this content available on tablets.

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In a rather surprising move from the political arena as a whole (though not unheard of, given the current President's affinity for modern technology), the White House app is actually extremely well designed.

04
Sep
2012-09-04_11h37_52

Amazon Signs Deal With Epix, Brings Paramount, MGM, And Lionsgate Films To Prime Instant Videos

Posted by in Amazon, News

Chances are, most of you only ever hear about Epix in an article discussing streaming rights (like this one). Epix is an online streaming video service a la Netflix that you can only get access to if you have a cable bundle that includes the site. Or, you know, if you have Netflix. For now anyway. The real value of Epix is the stable of movie rights it brings to the table, and now the joint venture is sharing its media library with Amazon Instant Video for all of the online retail giant's Prime customers.

According to Amazon, the deal will "more than double the number of titles available" to its customers who subscribe to the Prime service.

04
Sep
2012-09-04_10h51_52

Rovio Launching 'Bad Piggies', A Sequel To Angry Birds, On September 27th

Posted by in Games, News

This little piggy had some great success. This little piggy had none. This little piggy, however, has us wondering what's going on all the way home. Rovio announced today that, in a few weeks, we'll be seeing a sequel to Angry Birds arrive on the Play Store. Instead of being built from the ground up this time (or, rather, being bought from the ground up), this one will feature the mild-mannered pigs that you've spent so much time destroying. Now you'll get the chance to empathize with them!

We haven't seen any images or videos of actual game play yet, but according to tweets from @BadPiggies, the official Twitter account for the new game, it should be very different from Angry Birds.

04
Sep
253562

Verizon Officially Launches The Galaxy Stellar For Free On Contract And After Rebate

Posted by in Galaxy Stellar (SCH-I200), News

When we last heard about the Samsung Galaxy Stellar, a mid-range device coming to Verizon, Aaron was left wondering why this device was alleged to cost more than the Galaxy Nexus on contract. Well, now we have the answer: it doesn't! The 4" LTE device will be free with a 2-year contract, though that's after a $50 mail-in rebate.

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The device packs the specs you would expect from a phone that's launching with a (mostly) free price tag:

Additional features:

  • 4G LTE – customers can expect fast download speeds of  5 to 12 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps in 4G LTE coverage areas
  • 4-inch WVGA display (800 x 480)
  • Android™ 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich – support for Google Mobile™ Services including Gmail™, YouTube™, Google Talk™, Google Maps™ and access to more than 600,000 apps available to download from Google Play
  • Suite of Amazon apps includes Kindle, Shopping, MP3, Zappos, IMDB and Audible
  • 1.2 dual-core GHz Snapdragon™ application processor
  • Front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video chat and 3.2-megapixel rear-facing camera with auto focus
  • Backup Assistant Plus – media management and online storage service designed to help customers store and access media content such as music, videos, pictures, documents and contacts.

03
Sep
wordpresstiny

WordPress For Android Gets A Small Update, Now Supports Featured Images And Has A New Stats View

Posted by in Applications, News

Good news for you independent bloggers out there! WordPress just issued a small update to its mobile app. The biggest change is that you can now add featured images to a post. Featured images, of course, are treated differently in WordPress entries than in-line images and are often used as thumbnails, so it's been a bit of a problem that the app hasn't made it easy to add them until now.

Here's the full changelog:

What's new in version 2.2:
- Featured image support
- New stats view
- Performance and reliability improvements

Unfortunately, WordPress doesn't get updated quite as much as one would like.

03
Sep
officesuitepro

OfficeSuite Pro Update v6.5 Brings The Ability To Print Via Google Cloud, Spell-Check, Convert-To-PDF And More

Posted by in Applications, News

OfficeSuite Pro is one of the more powerful collections of productivity software for Android (and Cameron's personal favorite). Today it's getting just a bit better by adding several new features, including the ability to print via Google Cloud Print, convert text documents to PDF files, spell-check, and compatibility with SkyDrive.

Here's a complete list of what's new:

6.5 New Features:

  • Print - print documents with Google Cloud Print or previously installed third party printer
  • Convert to PDF - convert your text documents to PDF files
  • Spell-check (based on Google ICS spell-check)
  • New supported formats - opening of XLSM, PPTM, PPSM and DOCM formats
  • Thumbnail preview in Slideshow mode
  • Animated Slideshow -support for animated slideshows
  • Embedded images & charts (in Excel module)
  • Now compatible with Microsoft SkyDrive
  • WiFi Direct support

Although, some of the new additions may be having some problems.

31
Aug
htcunnamed1

Images Of An Unnamed HTC Device Surface - Could Be The Rumored 5" Mega-Smartphone Headed To Verizon

Posted by in HTC, News, Rumors

No, it's not an Evo. Don't let your eyes deceive you. What you're looking at are leaked pictures of an in-development HTC device. We don't know much about this one just yet. The phone lacks any carrier-specific branding, though the red accents are pretty typical of Verizon color schemes, such as the Droid Incredible.

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The site that posted these photos originally, PhoneHK, makes mention of this being a 5" device. Combined with the Verizon-ish color scheme, one might be tempted to believe that this is an early look at the Note-like device we've heard about previously. That HTC phone was rumored to have a full 1080p display, with a quad-core Krait-based S4.

31
Aug
beyondtiny

[Deal Alert] BeyondPod Podcast Manager Unlock Key Goes On Sale - Listen To Our Podcast On Any Device For $2

Posted by in Applications, Deals, News

The slew of deals coming out today just isn't stopping. Besides Google's coordinated End of Summer Sale, BeyondPod, an extremely popular podcast manager, is offering its full version unlock key for $1.99, down from the normal $6.99. A handy price drop after Listen was abruptly pulled from the Play Store. The key works for both the regular and tablet-oriented versions. This app is one of the more powerful podcast managers and is able to run on a wide selection of devices, including many Google TV boxes.

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The normal version only lasts for seven days before you'll be prompted to buy the unlock key.

31
Aug
grooveshark

Grooveshark App Can't Catch A Break, Disappears From The Play Store Again After Just A Few Days

Posted by in Applications, News

It's never easy to be a questionably-legal music streaming service on the internet. Grooveshark has had trouble with submitting an Android app in the past. A couple days ago, we thought the company had ironed out its problems with Google's ToS when it reappeared on the Play Store. Not so, it seems, as the app has now been pulled yet again.

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We haven't heard exactly why the app has been pulled this time around. No official word has been posted to Grooveshark's blog yet. Though, it wouldn't be hard to imagine the reason why. Grooveshark has always operated in a bit of a legal gray area.

31
Aug
crystaldefenderstiny

[Updated] Google Probably Prepping 'End Of Summer Sale' As Max Payne, Crystal Defenders, SwiftKey 3 And Others Offer Big Discounts

Posted by in Deals, News

Today's a good day for mobile gamers to open up their wallets. Max Payne, which David rated as having the highest possible nostalgia-to-dollars ratio, is 67% off today in the Play Store, clocking in at $0.99. Not bad. Looking for a better deal? How about Crystal Defenders? Developed by Square Enix (you know, the Final Fantasy guys), the game is normally $7.25, but for right now it's only $1.26, for a massive 83% off. Given the quality of Square Enix games, this is a fantastic deal.

Of course, Google is probably behind this, as each of these games include a reference to an 'End of Summer Sale' in their descriptions at this time.

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