08
Apr
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Kittehface Software Releases Photosphere Live Wallpaper, Gives Your 'Spheres Another Practical Use

Posted by in Applications, News

Haven't you been waiting for something better to do with your photospheres than just uploading them to Google+ for other people to enjoy? Thanks to Photosphere Live Wallpaper, you can finally place them front-and-center on your home screen. The idea is simple, a live wallpaper that uses your spherical photography as a background. It's one of those ideas we've all thought of, but until now, has remained absent from the Play Store.

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The developer, Kittehface Software, includes the beach shot seen above, but otherwise assumes users will provide their own photospheres. This may not be a problem to some of the natural paparazzi in our audience, but for those with less skill behind the camera, check out our recent coverage of SphereShare.net to borrow from a larger pool of publicly shared creations.

04
Jan
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Tile Launcher Beta Makes Your Android Homescreen Feel A Little More Windows Phone-y

Posted by in Applications, News

Whether you use Windows Phone or not, chances are at some point you're going to have to get used to the concept of tiles. Microsoft's putting them everywhere. On your Xbox, PC, tablet... They're unavoidable. If you like  the idea of tiles over icons, though, here's an app you might want to try out: Tile Launcher Beta. While it's not quite a clone of the MS-borne smartphone interface (for example, you can still have a custom background), it does place brightly colored squares on a continuous scrolling homescreen.

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You know...it kinda grows on you. While I've never been a huge fan of the Windows Phone interface as is, the tiles here are pretty slick and, as in the left-hand screenshot above, with some custom icon tweaking they can be made to look gorgeous.

22
Jan
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Stylish And Flexible "Typography Wall" Clock/Date/Battery Live Wallpaper Enters Android Market

Posted by in Applications, News

Truly stylish clock/date widgets of high quality are hard to come by, so whenever we see one released, we jump on it right away. Today's highlight is Typography Wall that was just released into the Android Market.

Typography Wall is actually a live wallpaper that comes with a variety of configurable elements, by default set up exactly the way you see below. You can use it without any modifications or jump right into changing things, from using your own background to changing transparency, rotation, blinking, positioning, and other aspects of each element. Such powerful customizations are made possible thanks to an absolutely brilliant OwnSkin framework that this LWP uses - in fact, it looks like anyone can create a live wallpaper using this free framework.

14
Oct
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New Dropbox Beta v1.0.0.7 Arrives, No Longer Constantly Runs As Service, Uploads Files In The Background, Adds Apps2SD, Fixes Bugs

Posted by in Applications, News

Dropbox users, listen up. Today, the company released an off-Market beta version of the Android app that finally fixes a runaway always-on background service, adds Apps2SD support, and fixes a bunch of other bugs. As far as I can tell, the background service was introduced to allow uploading of files even if the app is closed, except a buggy implementation never shut the service down. In the new release, files are properly uploaded in the background, after which the service correctly shuts down.

If you haven't checked out the Dropbox Android app before, see our reviews here and here.

In an off chance that you've never tried Dropbox at all, then know this: it is the single most useful application I have personally adopted this year.

08
Apr
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Apple Announces Multitasking For iPhone OS 4, Stabs Android Directly In The Heart

Posted by in News

Apple has just announced that iPhone OS 4 will support multitasking, allowing users to dive in and out of apps and keep some parts of an app running in the background while doing other things.

This is all done through a pop-up dock like interface that can be accessed by double pressing the home button. This will bring up all the apps that are currently running in the background.

Steve Jobs said they’ve figured out how to implement multitasking without it being detrimental to battery life or the performance of the phone. The latest SDK allows developers to access a number of services supporting features such as background audio and social networking integration.