Jun 032013
 

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Android smartphone owners can finally stop trading dirty looks with their iPhone-carrying friends: Twitter’s increasingly popular Vine six-second video and creativity app is finally available on the Android platform.

Vine, which Twitter snapped up late last year has quickly blossomed into a surprisingly versatile (and popular, Twitter reports 13 million users) app for creating not only six second video clips, but also amazing animation creations. The latter capability is all thanks to Vine’s most unique feature: the ability to stop and start recording video with a tap on the screen. Expert users manage to turn six seconds into dozens of taps for smooth, engaging animated tales (see the example below).

To download Vine for Android now, we suggest searching for “Vine Co.” in the Google Play store — it’s been otherwise difficult to locate and it still doesn’t show up as the first result.

MORE:   Vine for Android Finally Arrives.

 

 


 

Sep 062012
 

Recent finding by Nielsen on travel related app usage show that U.S. Android and iOS users spent 95 percent of their time accessing travel information from travel apps, versus only 5 percent from the mobile Web during JUne 2012.. This discrepancy was largely driven by Google Maps—the top Travel category app and mobile website during June—which accounted for 78 percent of all mobile time spent on Travel.

MORE:  Online Marketing Trends: Most Used travel Apps in US.

 


Aug 272012
 

Freelancing in web design and development is often a balancing act. You must carefully divide your time between doing work, getting more work, and ensuring you’re getting paid for said work. For each of these tasks, a huge range of tools exists – but it’s tough to know whether you’re using the best ones available.

We asked a number of leading designers to provide us with their favourites, so you can ensure your survival toolkit is the equivalent of a super-powered laser-armed jetpack, rather than a digital abacus.

In terms of approach, two distinct methodologies are clear. Some people, such as freelance web designer John Alex Jacob, favour a pared-down toolkit: “The way I do business has changed a lot this past year,” he tells .net. “I’ve been trying to keep things as simple as possible for my clients and me, improve efficiency and avoid unnecessary distractions while working.” He therefore advocates minimising what’s installed on your computer.

Others, however, advise exploring the diverse range of single-task indie apps and online services now available, in order to potentially boost productivity. Regardless of your own approach, we hope you find inspiration and exciting new tools in the selections provided by those we spoke to.

MORE:  The ultimate freelance web design tools | Feature | .net magazine.

 


Aug 152012
 

It’s not just customers who are drifting away from their laptops and desktops to do everything on mobile devices. More and more, entrepreneurs are cutting the bulky power cord and conducting business on the go. Thanks to tablets and the ever-growing selection of mobile apps that’s easy to do.

We asked 10 successful entrepreneurs to share the apps that boost their business productivity. Here are their top picks.

MORE:  10 Essential Tablet Apps for Business.

 


Jul 152012
 

Mafia Wars, Farmville, Poker, we all get those endless notifications from friends asking us to join games they’re playing. Some people don’t care that they are spamming you, some just don’t know. Many apps are sneaky abut sending requests to all your friends. So what do you do?

Facebook has several help posts involving privacy and app settings. The easiest way we’ve found is shown below, with some helpful links after that.

1. View your notifications. When you see an annoying invite you wish to block, click ‘see all notifications’ at the bottom of the list.

2. When you click ‘see all notifications’ you should get a page that looks something like this. Find the invite on the page. When you move the mouse pointer over the app notice, a small ‘x’ will appear to the right.

3. Click the ‘x’. When you do, it will say ‘turn off’. Click ‘turn off’, and a notice will appear telling you you’ve successfully blocked the game or app. That’s it!

 

 

There are other ways to do this through privacy settings and blocking all notices from a friend. Here are a couple of links that may also be helpful:

http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=202866049749634

http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=121070141307903

 


Jul 092012
 

It can be tough to keep up with all the new apps released each week. But you’re in luck: We take care of a lot of that for you, creating a roundup each weekend of some of our own new and updated app highlights from the week.

This week we found a few water-based games that require you to come up with a little strategy in order to win, and we found an old favorite game that has finally made its way over to Android.

MORE:  7 Apps You Don’t Want To Miss.

 


May 212012
 

According to a recent poll by the Associated Press and CNBC, 46 percent of respondents think Facebook will “fade away as new things come along.” That’s an ominous data point for a company whose IPO dominated the news cycle last week, and claims some 900 million worldwide users.

Facebook seems to be infiltrating every facet of our lives. “Like” buttons appear on every website. “Like us on Facebook!” shouts at us during TV commercials. And more and more apps rely on Facebook to simply log in. It’s starting to feel more than a little oppressive — it’s like we’re living in a blue-and-white-painted jail cell.

And all this IPO madness is just foul icing on the cake.

So where do you turn when the world’s been stricken with Facebook fever? We rounded up seven apps that could satisfy your social networking needs should Facebook go down the tubes — or you just can’t take it anymore.

SOURCE 7 Social Networking Apps for When Facebook Jumps the Shark | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.

 


Apr 022012
 

Draw Something topped our list of growing applications by monthly active users this week, among a handful of other games. Timeline apps from Rotten Tomatoes, BranchOut, Tripadvisor, Yahoo and others gained a significant number of new users.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 600,000 and 5.1 million MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

SEE THE LIST:

via Draw Something, Rotten Tomatoes, Yahoo, TripAdvisor, Yelp, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU.