03
Apr
tinyapps

Tiny Apps Is A Nifty Mini-Suite Of Floating Apps, Including Calculator, Notes, Recorder, Paint, And Music Player

Posted by in Applications, News

There are few things on Android more useful than good floating apps. Because, honestly, how often have you been looking at something and needed to jot down a quick note but didn't want to leave the foreground app? Or how about those times when a calculator is clutch, but so is seeing the numbers you need to calculate? We've seen various apps that answer these quandaries before, but now there's a place to get a handful of mini-apps all in one place. It's appropriately called Tiny Apps, and consists of some of the most useful tools one could have atop other windows: notes, recorder, paint, music player, and calculator.

04
Feb
Jelly-Bean-Logo

Stock Android Isn't Perfect: Jelly Bean 4.2 Edition

Posted by in Features, Jelly Bean 4.2, Stock Android Isn't Perfect
Last Updated: February 7th, 2013

A few months ago I wrote "Stock Android Isn't Perfect," an article where I turned my usual harsh UX critique on stock Android, instead of just picking on TouchWiz and Sense all the time in my reviews. The article went over pretty well, and even got a few responses from Googlers! I didn't cover everything that was wrong with Android, though, and there have been a bunch of updates since the original article, so it's about time I wrote a sequel.

So we're officially making this a series now, and it'll serve two purposes: One, there's a new version of Android out, and more things to complain about; and two, to give credit where it's due, because, since I wrote that article, a lot of things have been fixed.

10
Jul
myscripttiny

MyScript Calculator Lets You Write Math Expressions On Your Screen Instead Of Typing Them Out, Is Amazing

Posted by in Applications, News

When you were in school, you were told you need to learn how to do math the hard way because "you won't always have a calculator on you". Well, while we now know that your math teacher was about as good at forward-thinking as the dude who said no one would ever need more than 640k of RAM, there has still always been the problem of more complex expressions, including using constants, fractions, exponents and whatnot. Well, while this app won't replace your education on how those concepts work, MyScript Calculator lets you draw your problems rather than type them, making it much easier to get answers to less-than-straightforward expressions.

01
Mar
image

Fascinating: OnLive Unveils OnLive Desktop - A Free, Instantly Available Windows 7 Cloud Instance For Tablets, Complete With MS Office, Media Streaming, And More [Hands-On]

Posted by in App Reviews, Applications, News, Tablets, Videos

OnLive, the company that has already revolutionized gaming is now gunning for making the same kind of splash in OS virtualization. And not just any OS virtualization, but Windows 7 in the cloud, for free - a set of words I never thought I'd write in the same sentence.

Something worth pointing out right off the bat is OnLive's "groundbreaking video compression technology" that is used to stream the Desktop cloud to your tablet. If there's one company that has figured out how to perfect streaming of full-screen media, it's definitely OnLive.

image image

I was a bit skeptical at first, but after trying out every aspect of the app through a relatively slow, Spanish Vodafone HSPA+ hotspot here in Barcelona, I have to say I'm thoroughly impressed.

15
Feb
image

Nostalgia++: TI-89 Calculator Emulator Finally Comes To Android, Download It While You Still Can

Posted by in Applications, News

A little over a year ago, developer Doug Melton delighted us with Android emulators for three popular TI calculators - TI-83, TI-85, and TI-86. Nostalgic and surprisingly useful, they resonated with many of you, but, unfortunately, TI forced Doug to take them all down a short while after.

You see, Doug actually shipped them with the original ROMs included, which was great for one-click installations, but apparently not so great for intellectual property. Oh, and he did name them TI-83, TI-85, and TI-86 originally, giving Texas Instruments an even simpler reason to have the apps removed.

In addition to all of the above, TI-89, the king among TI calculators and one of my personal favorites, has never (to my knowledge) existed on Android.

03
Feb
aircalc

[New App] AirCalc Is An Awesome Floating Calculator For Android That Can Run In The Foreground On Top Of Any App

Posted by in Applications, News

One of the biggest features of the Galaxy Tab series (minus the OG Tab) is TouchWiz UX and its mini-app tray. In fact, it was difficult for me to get used to the Transformer Prime after having the Galaxy Tab 10.1 because I miss those little apps so much. For the uninitiated, mini-apps in Touchwiz UX are small "portable" applications that run in an independent window on top of the foreground application.

wm_SC20110805-155916

The TouchWiz UX mini-calculator

Of all the mini-apps, the calculator is among the most useful - who really wants to navigate away from the current application to use a full screen calculator (especially on a tablet)?

17
Jan
image

Nostalgic And Awesome: Fully Working TI-83, TI-85, And TI-86 Android Emulators Hit The Market

Posted by in Applications, News

Sure, there are some excellent calculators in the Android Market, but do any of them make you hesitate for a minute when looking at them to figure out whether you are staring at a phone or a smaller version of your favorite Texas Instruments machine? Doug Melton's ports of the popular AlmostReal TI-83, TI-85, and TI-86 emulators to Android are so successful, most of your professors wouldn't even know the difference if they saw one of these on your desk. The buttons, the layout, the graphics, TI-BASIC program support - it's all there. Awesome.

I'm not sure whether Texas Instruments goes after emulators of its calculators, but I would download these ASAP if I were you.