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Apr

Roundup: Our Top Six Favorite New Apps From March 2013

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, Roundups

Last Updated: May 13th, 2013

If you're like us, you have an obsession with new apps. When you try every new app you come across though, you're bound for disappointment. After all, not every app can be a paragon of functionality, style, and convenience. With that in mind, we go through the long list of new apps submitted to the Play Store every couple of weeks and bring you the best. Even that, though, can be a little too much to digest for some users. For that reason, we've got monthly roundups featuring just a handful of the very very best apps and games from the previous month.

Feb

Holy Crap, This Color Sheep Game, With Rainbow Colored Lasers, Is A Lot Harder Than It Looks

Posted by Eric Ravenscraft in Games, News

If you're colorblind, then I'm afraid you might have to sit this one out, but the rest of you might want to try out Color Sheep. The game is fairly straightforward: you're a sheep. Of course. A pack of hungry, multi-colored wolves are descending upon you. In order to avoid being consumed, you have to target them with your mouth lasers. You didn't know sheep have mouth lasers? Well, they do.

In order to defeat the wolves, you have to change Woolson's (yes, that's his name and it's fantastic, shut up) fleece to match the color of the animals that are attacking.

Oct

Quick Hands-On: CyanDelta Updater Brings You Incremental CM Updates, Eliminates Nightly 200MB Downloads

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Android OS, Applications, Development, News

Many of you probably already know how I feel about CyanogenMod – I swear by it, especially on my EVO LTE. Nothing beats it in terms of bringing a (mostly) stock experience to your device with just the right amount of tweaks and extra features. Plus, there are nightly updates that satisfy my need to stay on the bleeding edge and get a daily fix of… fixes. The only downside to this is that each nightly update (for my EVO, anyway) hovers around 180MB, a download that takes just a little more time than I care to spend sometimes.

Enter CyanDelta Updater.

Sep

Download: CyanogenMod 10 Messaging App With Quick Message, Notification Shade Quick Reply

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, Jelly Bean 4.1

CyanogenMod's recent improvements to CM10's messaging app – Quick Message pop-ups and "Quick Reply" functionality in the notification shade – are now available for download in apk form.

If you missed our initial coverage of CM10's latest enhancements to the messaging app (thanks to David von Tonder), here's the short version: the default messaging app in recent CM10 builds includes a feature called Quick Message that, upon receipt of a new SMS message, triggers a handy popup notification that allows users to quickly type up a reply, swipe to other new messages, view the message in the messaging app, or simply dismiss the notification.

Sep

CyanogenMod Introduces Quick Message Pop-Ups, Notification Shade 'Quick Reply' Action On The Way

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Android OS, Development, Jelly Bean 4.1, News

A couple of days ago, the CyanogenMod team announced via Google+ a new feature merged to CM's Jelly Bean code branch – Quick Message. In case you missed it, Quick Message is a feature (built by David van Tonder) that displays a pop-up notification upon receipt of a new SMS message, offering the ability to reply from within the pop-up, view the message in Android's Messaging app, swipe to another new message, or close the notification.

Today, van Tonder (along with CyanogenMod) announced even further enhancements to the feature, primarily influenced by user feedback, adding a "Quick reply" option to SMS messages' actionable notifications.

Aug

Google Rolls Out Aesthetic And Functional Improvements To Mobile And Tablet Search Quick Answers

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Google, News

In a post to its "Inside Search" blog, Google announced today that several improvements are currently being rolled out to mobile search (for phones and tablets), making some of the engine's quick answers "richer, more beautiful, and more interactive."

In the recent past, users have enjoyed improvements to weather and calculator searches, with handy interactive cards (reminiscent of Google Now's visual style).

Google is now updating a heaping handful of other quick answer features including finance, currency conversion, unit conversion, dictionary definitions, local time lookup, and holiday and sunrise times.

With the aesthetic and functional improvements, Google Search will keep its intuitive quality – for example, a user could search for "how many miles are 42 kilometers" and see an interactive quick answer card with the answer to your query displayed prominently above a host of interactive elements.

Jul

[New App] Sudo QuickLaunch Replaces Jelly Bean's Google Search Swipe Gesture With A List Of Your Favorite Apps

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, Jelly Bean 4.1, News

Sudo Make Me An App has just released Sudo QuickLaunch to the Play Store, an app that handily replaces Google Search's swipe-up gesture in Jelly Bean with a list of your favorite apps.

If you're like me, you hit the search bar in Jelly Bean more often than you swipe up to get to Google Search, so Sudo QuickLaunch is a welcome addition that not only makes that gesture useful, but can keep your home screen clutter-free. Plus, those wanting swipe-up access to Google Search can place the Search app in their QuickLaunch tray.

Besides its functionality, one of the benefits of Sudo's new app is that it is simple – it works exactly how you'd expect, is ad-free, and requires absolutely no special permissions.

Oct

Wizz Bar Cleans Up Your Tablet's Home Screen, Leaves No Clutter Of Its Own

Posted by Liam Spradlin in Applications, News

Almost immediately after getting my hands on a Galaxy Tab 10.1, it was updated by Samsung to include the infamous TouchWiz UX. This brought about some significant aesthetic and UI changes, including a quick-access tray, which brings up a list of handy apps at the touch of a button. The only problem is that this bar isn't customizable. For those who want more options, or those not fortunate enough to have the TouchWiz experience, developer SnowBEE has released Wizz Bar.

Wizz Bar allows you to create a sort of mini app tray, fully customizable with the apps you use most.

Aug

[Update: EVO 3D Too] Tip: Android 2.3.4 Update For HTC Sensations In Europe Enables Screenshot Shortcut

Posted by Brian O'Toole in News, Sensation / Sensation 4G (Pyramid), Tips & Tutorials

Earlier this week, the OTA update to Android 2.3.4 finally began rolling out to HTC Sensations around Europe. Our unit received the update yesterday, and quite by accident we discovered that - besides being able to make voice/video calls in GTalk - we also had a new ability to take screenshots untethered from a computer.

Those of you familiar with the standard method of taking screenshots through the Android SDK know how convoluted the process can be: hunting for drivers, enabling debugging, living down those notification-bar icons ... all a fairly time consuming process. Not to mention you have to be at a computer.

May

[Tip] Search The Android Web Market A Lot? Do It Straight From The Url Bar Like A Boss With This Handy Trick (Firefox, Chrome)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, Tips & Tutorials

If you liked my speedy QR code tips before, you're going to love the tip I have for you today. Ever since the Android web Market was launched, I found myself loading the homepage just to make a search approximately 17 million times a day, give or take a few. As you know, the web Market homepage is quite heavy, so loading it just to make a search, especially while tethering on a slow connection, was starting to get kind of annoying.

In an effort to save both time and clicks (hello, Carpal Tunnel), I've created a much handier way of firing up a search with only a few strokes and without the need for any tools outside of Firefox or Chrome.