Cool Futuristic/Concept Gadgets That Really Inspire

About 10 years ago, we didn’t really expect the 1.4mb 3.5 inch floppy to evolve into flash drives 10x smaller with storage capacity as big as 32gb. The interesting thing about technology is; it’s just going to get more and more high-end but the size, is just going to get smaller and slimmer.

These concept gadgets you see before you today, have extremely high chance of getting into production anywhere in the future. For example, Microsoft’s Surface Computing Technology certainly tells us they are for real. Here’s some really cool concept gadgets, just concepts for now but we really hope it’ll be implemented, that inspires. If we happened to missed something impressive, please let us know in comment. Full list after jump.

B-membrane Laptop/Desktop

Concept computer designed by Korean designer Won-Seok Lee. No bulky monitors, just a UFO shape system that displays screen like a projector. [via yankodesign]

Nokia Aeon Full Screen Concept Phone

The most prominent design feature of aeon is a touchscreen that stretches over the full surface area of the phone. [via engadget mobile]

Napkin PC

The Napkin PC is a multi-user, multi-interface, modular computer designed for creative professionals to collaborate and bring their greatest ideas to life. [via yankodesign]

Cellphone Code

This phone uses haptic technology to provide physical feedback for making a call. To turn it on…twist a section, to dial a number…twist a bunch of sections, to make an international call…break your wrist! [via yankodesign]

Virtual Goggles

Designed and conceived by Franz Steiner, he wondered what the personal assistant might look like in the future. [Blutsbrueder Design via Gizmodo]

New dSLR?

Concept of a digital camera which can be used in one hand. [perezprada via yankodesign]

Future Internet Search

All you need to do is point the tablet at any object and you should get search results as good as Google’s, just more interactivity. [petitinvention via behance.net]

Sunshine Pillow

We arent sure if it’s warm enough, but it’s good to own one. [Rei Gallery via gizmodo]

Capsule Radio Clock

Not rocket science, but definetely cool to get one. [sequoia-studio via tuvie]

Info-Live Watch

INFO Live is an data organizer for connected internet world. It is able to transfer data information to any hardware and person any moment in time of need. [via nextgendesigncomp]

Jive for the elderly

Jive is a range of 3 products that were designed to get elderly technophobes connected to their friends and family. [jive via tuvie]

LifeMap

Touch screen digital photo storing and organization product. [via tuvie]

Microsoft Arc Mouse

When you go advanced in all your computer equipments, the next best thing is to get a futuristic mouse. [via geekandhype]

Pebble Key Port

Designed with many slots so that user can easily group their keys into categories such as car keys, home keys or office keys. [via tuvie]

Pixel Perfect Hour Glass

Title says it all. A perfect gadget anyone wants to own, I suppose? [Pavel Balykin via yankodesign]

Calliper Style Radio

Like a precision calliper tool, 08 Radio by Mikael Silvanto lets you precisely find the station you want by sliding the entire radio unit up and down the scale. [via yankodesign]

Sony's big challenge: Make PlayStation 4 part of the living room experience

 

 When Sony pulls back the curtain on the next-generation PlayStation videogame console, the world will see how much the Japanese consumer electronics titan has been paying attention.Sony could double-down on hardware to power even more realistic graphics and rich game play than the impressive specifications of PlayStation 3 consoles nearing the end of a life cycle started in 2006.
Or, Sony may step toward a vision outlined by chief executive Kazuo Hirai by introducing an improved console as part of an ecosystem that weaves the company's film, music, games and electronics together with the trend toward getting home entertainment online.
"Sony needs a living room experience," Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said while discussing expectations that a PlayStation 4 will be showcased at an event being hosted by Sony on February 20 in New York City.
"They need more software, not more hardware."
The PlayStation 3 launched as an engineering triumph complete with Blu-ray high-definition disk player capabilities only to see rival Microsoft score with Xbox 360 consoles for gaming as well as online films, music and more.
"Sony can't build a company on those few people who are hardcore gamers, so they have to figure out how to bridge to the all-purpose consumer who likes games, which is most of us," McQuivey said.
"If they emphasize how this is really a television set-top box with your favorite channels and Netflix, it will mean Sony has paid attention."
Sony has remained mum, but that hasn't stopped talk of hardware upgrades such as improved graphics and controllers with touchpads, and chatter of Sony announcing its own cable-style service to route film or music content to PlayStation consoles.
Sony needs to adapt to changing lifestyles while not alienating videogame lovers devoted to its hardware.
Low-cost or free games on smartphones or tablet computers are increasing the pressure on videogame companies to deliver experiences worth players' time and money.
New generation consoles are typically priced in the $400 to $500 range, and blockbuster game titles hit the market at $60 each.
"Sony is under a lot of pressure," said National Alliance Capital Markets analyst Mike Hickey. "Gamers are desperate for innovation and better games."
While Sony is tethered to "legacy" hardware, companies such as Apple and Google are driving innovation with tablets, smartphones, and ways to route Internet offerings to television sets, according to Hickey.
While ramping up content and services for PlayStation, Sony also needs to motivate people to upgrade from the current model.
"If Sony wants to win it, they need to show some killer games to get people to go out and spend a lot of money for the core game experience," Hickey said.
He blamed a dearth of compelling titles as a reason for disappointing sales of Nintendo's innovative Wii U consoles introduced late last year.
"The Wii U is a case study you can't ignore," Hickey said. "Sony at least has to nail it with the games; the core market can drive the mass market."
Industry tracker NPD Group reported that just shy of $9 billion was spent in the United States last year on purchasing or renting video or computer games.
Another $5.92 billion was spent on game downloads, subscriptions, and play on mobile games or at social networks, according to NPD.
French videogame star Ubisoft reported that sales surged 23 percent overall in the final quarter of last year with hit installments of its "Assassin's Creed" and "Far Cry" franchises while online revenue leapt 143 percent.
"People are gaming more now than they ever have," McQuivey said. "More minutes on more devices over more types of games from consoles to mobile phones."
"Console gaming is going to face challenge because you can pull out your tablet and have some pretty amazing gaming experiences for $1.99 or free with ads," he added.
Forrester predicts that while US households will turn increasingly to accessing the Internet through videogame consoles and smart televisions, games on smartphones and tables will "negatively impact" the console market.
"Tablets are in every household and the computing power of tablets is going up every year," Hickey said. "Eventually, the tablet could very well become the console."
Analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities expected Sony to remain mum about pricing and specific release date while unveiling the PS4 later this month.
"The new console will clearly be more powerful," Pachter said. "How they will use that power is unclear."

Pause or Stop Gmail from Receiving Incoming Emails

Pause or Stop Gmail from Receiving Incoming Emails

Email is, no doubt, the best way to mail someone without involving any physical transfers of letters or the transportation. But over the years our inbox had been controlled by others. Whenever someone wished to send us an email, our inbox received it. I always wanted some feature that allowed us to enable or disable receiving the emails.
Imagine you are on some vacation with family, and you receive some email from office. I am sure you won’t like that and you will have to go on and read the email. Wouldn’t you find it helpful if there had been some plug-in or some tool that can enable us to stop or pause the incoming emails on our will and as long as we wanted, still letting the email senders know that we haven’t read the email?
Well, if you are a Chrome or Firefox user, then here is an extension right for you called Inbox Pause. As the name of this add-on/extension suggests, it is a plug-in for your browser installing which puts a Pause/Unpause button right besides the Gmail Mail dropdown. If you click the Pause button, then your inbox will go into a paused state that means you will no longer receive an email, and the senders will be notified with the custom message that you will put (this will notify them that you have not currently read the email and the replies will be delayed).
 
You don’t need to worry about the incoming emails, as they will be temporarily stored with “paused” label and will not be shown to you until you unpause the inbox back. Also you will see a message on the email header that you have currently Paused the inbox and need to Unpause it back to read the received emails.

The service is so interesting that it protects you from receiving emails whenever you don’t want, still letting know your email senders about the email status. You can set a custom message on the auto-responder mentioning that you have currently paused your inbox, and cant read the emails. Also ask them to call you on your cell if it is urgent.
Although it uses the same concept as the out-of-office service, but is easier to use.
You can download the extension by visiting the link below.
Download Inbox Pause

Send Encrypted and Private Emails from your Gmail on Chrome

Send Encrypted and Private Emails from your Gmail on Chrome

Today with the hackers are so active that one can never be sure of the information exchange over the web. Whenever we send an email to someone, even it can be hacked before reaching the recipient. Thus, if you are required to send someone important and confidential information then sending an email would not be safe at all.
But that does not mean you should not email someone at all, in fact if the information is really private then you can send the recipient an encrypted message that will self destroy after a limited time. This way, it would not be easy for anyone to decode the message and your information will remain protected.
To implement this and to send an encrypted email, you just need to login into your Gmail account with the Chrome browser. If you can do that, then here is an extension called SafeGmail that will encrypt the normal message for you using the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) algorithm.
How to use SafeGmail:
1. Install the extension from the link provided at the bottom of this article.
2. Login to Gmail as usual but after restarting the Chrome browser.
3. Compose the email normally but now you will see two extra buttons in the Gmail menu. After you have finished composing the email, click the “Encrypt?” button.

4. Now you will see a questionnaire in which you should put a question and the answer to it (the answer is case sensitive). This questionnaire will be used at the recipient’s side for logging into the email.
5. Now when you are done, click the Send + Encrypt button, to send the encrypted email.
6. At the other side, the recipient will need to answer the same question to receive a link with some encrypted text.


7. First copy this encrypted text, and then click on the “Click Here” link in the email.
8. Now in the text box that opens, you need to paste the above copied text. When you click the “Show my Mail” button, your decrypted text will appear.

It might be little extra effort to send and receive the encrypted private information to someone, but it is worth it and that too when you don’t have to install any third party tool for that. Please note that this extension is not found to work on new Gmail interface.
Download SafeGmail

Automatically Resize and Optimize Images while Uploading Online

Automatically Resize and Optimize Images while Uploading Online

Photos are the best way to express something that is being talked about as it does so with ease and helps the reader in gaining the insight. We all like to share and upload our photos online and via email, don’t we? But it can be a problem as the images clicked from a good camera are large in size and due to the sharing and uploading restrictions we can’t just send an image like that. We thus, need to optimize an image before uploading it.
Optimizing an image is not at all difficult, with some default photo editors like Picture Manager, anyone can do it easily but what if you wish to have different profile of optimizing for every different website? Say you wish to resize an image under 100 KB for email but around 1MB for flickr? You will do that manually right?

Here is a free application called Robosizer that can do this work for you and that too automatically. All you have to do is just install this tool in your system, and run and set it up for the first time. It will keep monitoring your photo uploading activities and will automatically resize the image whenever you are about to upload any image automatically in the background as per the profile set by you.

You can also see the different profiles while uploading and choose if you want a different one too. If you click on the system tray icon, then you will also see the resizing options that you have set for different online services.
The best thing I liked about this tool is that it runs in the background and whenever you are uploading any image it automatically detects it, resizes it, notifies you about the resizing and optimizes the image for your uploading. The tool works great with most of the browsers and applications and is supported on both 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows XP, 7 and 8.
Download Robosizer

Remotely Capture Photos from iPhone or Android Phone with Remote Shot

Remotely Capture Photos from iPhone or Android Phone with Remote Shot

These days when the cell phones or better to term as Smart phones come with really good camera, you don’t actually need to carry your camera around. Moreover the phones have really good camera optics, features, zoom and other things. There are moments when we depend upon our phones to click the picture for us.

Say you are at some get together with your buddies and need to click a group pic of yours with no body around, what shall you do? Placing the phone on some surface might turn into a bad idea as this can be risky and tedious too. We have found a small app right for handling these types of situations.

With this free app called Remote Shot, you can actually control your iPhone or an Android phone remotely. That’s right, you don’t need anyone to click your phone for you. Using the app is very easy too, you just need to install the app in two of the phones (one to click and another one to control the first one).

After you have installed the app in two phones, you can select one to be the camera and the other one to be the remote. What’s more, you also get to see the live preview of the shot being captured in the remote phone thereby letting you to adjust your position, zoom, flash, and other things before actually clicking the pic. You can also select the recording mode to be either still or video remotely.
The app makes use of the in-built Bluetooth technology to connect the two phones which is definitely not a problem. The app is really convenient to use and comes handy when you wish to click remotely.
The app is free to use and can be used in both iOS and Android platforms.
Download Remote Shot for iPhone
Download Remote Shot for Android

Remotely Access and Control another Computer with Chrome Remote Desktop

Remotely Access and Control another Computer with Chrome Remote Desktop

Posted: 13 Feb 2013 04:30 AM PST

It is not possible for anyone to travel with their own personal computer all the time and if it is a desktop then you can’t even imagine doing this. For some or the other reasons, it becomes necessary for us to log back into our own system and if you can’t be present at your system then at that occasion comes Remote Sharing handy.
There are lots of methods which one can make use of to remotely access and control a computer, most require installing some software in both the systems. I came across this handy Chrome extension called Chrome Remote Desktop that can help you do the same thing and that too easily and without installing any other special remote sharing software.

All you need to do is just install this extension into your own computer as well as the computer to be accessed (you might need the assistance of someone at the other end). When you are done doing this, you just need to login into Chrome with your google address.

Now you are all set for the remote sharing and control of the remote computer. Start the app, which will now provide you with an Access Code. You need to provide this code to the person assisting you on the other end, entering which into the same app there, will connect you remotely to the other computer. Now you have two options either to share your computer or remotely control the other computer (the options which you will see on the app itself).

This is all, you are now connected! You can remotely control the other system, view files, run apps or just let your system be controlled. The advantage of using this extension is that it is very easy to operate and doesn’t require any third party software (since most users use Chrome today on their machines).
P.S.: The speed of the connection also depends upon your network speed. If you want to try it out for yourself, then the download link is below.
Download Chrome Remote Desktop

Android 4.0: Tracking Ice Cream Sandwich's Availability on Smartphones

Last week HTC published a list of phones that will receive an update to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, along with approximate launch dates and a projected completion date of late August 2012. This is not a very encouraging prospect considering Google officially introduced ICS last October. Also because Android's next major revision codenamed “Jelly Bean” will be close to release by then (slated for Q3/12).
But this is not an issue with HTC phones exclusively. In fact, Ice Cream Sandwich is more the exception rather than the rule on Android devices across the board. There’s a total of four smartphones shipping with the OS preloaded, just over a dozen with upgrades available, and more than 30 on the “coming soon” list (also: see a list of Android 4.0 ICS highlights).

Phones shipping with ICS

Your choices here are limited to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which was released in December in partnership with Google and features an unskinned version of Android 4.0, and the HTC One lineup comprising the One S on T-Mobile, One X on AT&T, and Evo 4G LTE on Sprint. These are soon to be joined by the Samsung Galaxy S III, which is expected to launch globally soon, including all four major carriers in the US.

Phones with ICS upgrades rolling out now

These smartphones are already being upgraded to Android 4.0. If you own one of these and are still waiting for the update to come through, keep in mind that they’re being rolled out over a period of several weeks.

HTC	Samsung	Sony
83 Sensation	91 Galaxy S II (unlocked, Canada)	81 Xperia Ray
84 Sensation XE	79 Galaxy S II LTE (unlocked, Canada)	80 Xperia arc S
82 Sensation 4G (T-Mo, Bell, Virgin Ca.)	83 Galaxy Note (unlocked)	Xperia neo V
71 Vivid (AT&T)	71 Nexus S 4G (Sprint)	71 Xperia arc
82 Velocity (Australia)	84 Nexus S (unlocked)	77 Xperia neo
78 Amaze 4G (T-Mobile)
Raider 4G (Bell Canada)

Phones with ICS updates "coming soon"

Not all phone manufacturers are offering specific details as to when each of their devices are getting upgraded to Android 4.0. Motorola is only listing them by quarter, while HTC recently provided a two-month release window, and Sony is being a little more specific with the next round of updates starting this week and continuing throughout June into the third quarter. Samsung is not giving out any dates whatsoever.

HTC

Smartphone model	Timeframe	Device release date
Sensation XL	May-June	May 19, 2011
EVO 4G+	May-June	June 2011
Rezound	June-July	November 14, 2011
EVO 3D	June-July	June 24, 2011
EVO Design 4G	June-July	October 23, 2011
Desire S	June-July	March 8, 2011
Incredible S	June-July	February 26, 2011
Rhyme	June-July	September 29, 2011
Thunderbolt	July-August	March 17, 2011
Desire HD	July-August	October 20, 2010
DROID Incredible 2	TBD	April 28, 2011

HTC notes that due to localization, testing, and partner approvals, updates do not roll out to all devices at the same time. For devices on a wide variety of carriers and in many countries, rollouts can take up to 45 days from the initial update to reach everyone. You can manually check for updates by going to Settings>About>Software Updates if you are not prompted to update automatically.
The upgrade to Android 4.0 will include Sense 3.6, not Sense 4, since some aspects of Sense 4 require dedicated hardware, which is not available on all devices.

Motorola

Smartphone model	Timeframe	Device release date
Droid Razr (USA, Asia Pacific, Canada, China, EMEA, Japan, Korea & LATAM)	Q2 2012	November 11, 2011
Droid Razr Maxx (USA)	Q2 2012	January 26, 2011
Atrix 2 (Asia-Pacific, LATAM, USA, and selected other markets)	Q3 2012	October 16, 2011
Atrix 4G (USA)	Q3 2012	February 22, 2011
Droid 4 (USA)	Q3 2012	February 10, 2011
Droid Bionic (USA)	Q3 2012	September 8, 2011
Photon 4G (USA)	Q4 2012	July 31, 2011
Atrix / Atrix 4G (Asia Pacific, EMEA and LATAM)	TBD	--
Electrify (USA)	TBD	September 22, 2011
Photon 4G (Japan)	TBD	--

To date, the only Motorola device that has been upgraded to Android 4.0 is the WiFi-only XOOM (and only the versions in the US or Canada). The company outlined their 4-step updating process back in December and plans to start rolling out a few of those “soon”. Regarding the selection of phones that qualify for updates and the ones that don’t, Motorola has this to say: “Obviously we want the new release to improve our devices. If we determine that can’t be done—well then, we’re not able to upgrade that particular device.”

Samsung

Smartphone model	Timeframe	Device release date
Galaxy S II (AT&T, T-Mobile)	TBD	April 28, 2011
Galaxy S II Skyrocket (AT&T)	TBD	November 6, 2011
Galaxy Note (AT&T)	TBD	October 28, 2011
Captivate Glide (AT&T)	TBD	November 21, 2011
Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch (Sprint)	TBD	September 16, 2011
Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G (T-Mobile)	TBD	March 21, 2012

Samsung has been at the forefront of the move from 2.3 to 4.0, rolling Ice Cream Sandwich out to a number of unlocked devices, including the hugely popular Galaxy S II. Unfortunately, updates to branded devices tend to get held up in carrier-specific testing so a lot of users with subsidized phones are still waiting their turn. Making matters worst neither Samsung nor carriers are sharing a timeframe for the update.

Sony

Smartphone model	Timeframe	Device release date
Xperia mini	Week of May 28	August 2011
Xperia mini pro	Week of May 28	August 9, 2011
Xperia pro	Week of May 28	October 18, 2011
Xperia active	Week of May 28	October 1, 2011
Sony Ericsson Live	Week of May 28	Q4 2011
Xperia S	End of June	March 1, 2012
Xperia P	End of June	Unreleased
Xperia U	Q3 2012	May 7, 2012
Xperia sola	TBD	May 7, 2012
Xperia ion	TBD	March 1, 2012

Sony has been pretty forthcoming about its Ice Cream Sandwich rollout and so far they’ve mostly kept true to their planned upgrade schedule. Just recently they started rolling out updates for two of their 2011 devices and more should follow throughout the week and over the next month. Notably, the Xperia Play will be the only Xperia phone from last year’s lineup not getting the update, as Sony cited stability and consistency issues.
Sony is rolling out Android 4.0.4 to its devices while remaining on kernel 2.6.32 — technically, ICS should feature Kernel 3.0.X+. It’s unclear if this will result in any issues or missing features. A developer for Sony Ericsson had previously said that it takes a lot of testing and validation to make a new kernel stable, so they decided to keep the tried and tested 2.6.32 kernel to release ICS as quickly as possible.

Why all the fuss about having the latest version?

If there’s one lesson to learn here is that you should buy a phone that makes you happy today, not one that promises new features with an update that may or may not appear. Granted, that’s a valid advice for any consumer electronic purchase, but Android serves as the perfect example for it.
That said, it’s not unreasonable to want your one-year-old phone to be able to get the latest software update, especially when you know it’s technically capable of running it. There are many new features to be gained in the transition from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich. Here are a few of the most noteworthy:

• UI Improvements: Android 4.0 is based on a new look and feel, the Holo theme, which offers a more consistent experience throughout the OS and makes it easier for users to find those common buttons and actions. There’s also a new “Roboto” font that’s easier on the eye and has a more modern feel.
• Multitasking, Widgets, and Folders: There’s a new Recent Apps button that lets users jump from one task to another, and a side-swiping gesture to get rid of apps you’re no longer using. Users can also resize widgets to their liking and drag and drop icons on top of each other to create folders.
• Contacts and sharing: ICS ditches the old Android 2.3 contact list for one that shows richer profile information, including large profile picture, phone numbers, addresses, and a button for connecting on integrated social networks. There’s also a new NFC peer-to-peer sharing feature that allows users with NFC-capable devices to share apps, contacts, music, videos by touching one phone to another.
• Improved speed and full hardware acceleration: Tests have shown significant performance improvements in Android 4.0 when it comes to handling graphics and using the web browser.
• Data usage manager: Android 4.0 allows users to monitor total data usage by network type and application, as well as set limits on those data-hungry apps so you don’t incur in expensive overage fees.
• Various other new features and enhancements: You can access the camera and notifications without unlocking your device first, there’s a new face-unlock feature, Wi-Fi direct support to share files between compatible devices, improvements to the camera and video apps, and more.

Lastly, it’s also worth noting that the lack of timely updates exacerbates Android’s fragmentation problem, which makes it that much harder for developers to QA apps. If you’ve ever wondered why you run into bugs and other unexplained behaviors on Android but not on iOS, well, fragmentation probably played a part on it.

5 Android apps that should be on every smartphone

5 Android apps that should be on every smartphone

I may be hard on Google for the mess that it has created with Android Honeycomb tablets, but on the smartphone front Android is still going strong. That is with good reason, Android phones are as good as anything on the market, and made even better with the right apps installed. No matter if you are a fan of HTC Sense phones with its attractive UI, Samsung TouchWiz phones, or stock Android phones, there are five apps that should be installed on every Android phone to make them better. 

 

LauncherPro. The Android launcher is attractive but very basic in design and function, and LauncherPro takes any Android phone to the next level. This alternative launcher adds a customizable dock bar for launching apps, but that is only a fraction of the functionality it brings to the home screen. Speaking of home screens, LauncherPro brings a totally revamped home screen environment, with a new app drawer for launching apps included. The app also makes a suite of home screen widgets available that can be added as desired to install a raft of new functionality on the home screens as desired. These widgets can be customized to the heart's desire, and are skinnable to make them look just right. The Gmail widget alone is worth the price of LauncherPro. There are other alternative launchers but none match LauncherPro for features. You must have the Pro version to unlock all the features including the widgets. $3.49

Beautiful Widgets. The strength of Android is the ability to make the interface very personal, and Beautiful Widgets is the daddy of them all. The app installs a bunch of home screen widgets of varying sizes that make it a breeze to tailor the look and feel of the screens to the user's personal taste. The widgets include HTC Sense look-alikes for those who like the clock and weather screens on those devices, but that's just for starters. There are hundreds of clock, weather and battery meter skins for download within Beautiful Widgets that can make the phone screen look any way you want. The various widgets can be combined in any number of ways to fit your style. There is even a live wallpaper that changes the screen background to match the time of day and local weather conditions. €1.99.

Amazon MP3. This free app has morphed from a simple way to get free music on Android phones into a full-fledged cloud music playing system. The free MP3 of the day is still there, along with easy access to cheap album deals in the Amazon music store, but with the launch of the Cloud Drive the Amazon MP3 app has evolved into a must-have for Android phone owners. Once you upload your music library to the Amazon Cloud, streaming it to any Android device (and computer) is a simple tap on the screen. Purchased (and free) music is automatically put into your Cloud Drive for instant access on the phone. The app also plays music store locally on the phone for those not into the whole cloud thing. Free.

 

 Dolphin Browser HD. The web browsers installed on Android phones are pretty good, but they don't hold a candle to the Dolphin Browser HD. This browser is as fast as can be for rendering web pages in perfect form, and has a unique touch system for improved web browsing. The bookmark system is as sophisticated as that on any desktop browser, yet is as easy to operate as tapping on the screen. Dolphin also has a plug-in system that adds tons of functionality to the browser as desired. There is a configurable gesture system in Dolphin that lets you trigger actions by drawing on the screen with a fingertip, a tremendously useful feature. There is a free version that is ad-supported in the settings menus, or a $4.99 version without ads.

Multicon Widget. Phone screens can only hold so much information due to the small size, and sometimes you need to put more icons for apps than will fit. The free Multicon widget lets you put up to 4 app icons in the space normally occupied by one, which greatly extends the screen real estate. The four icon slots are not restricted to apps, you can put shortcuts for actions and special functions like Wi-Fi toggle in the slots. This is the most useful widget for a free app.
These five Android apps add incredible value to the smartphone, but they are not the only good apps in the Android Market. What are your must-have apps for Android?

 

Top 10 features in Microsoft Office 2013

Top 10 features in Microsoft Office 2013

Microsoft Corp. unveiled the customer preview of the new Microsoft Office that features an intuitive design that works with touch, stylus, mouse or keyboard across new Windows devices, including tablets.

"We are taking bold steps at Microsoft," Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft said at the press conference in San Francisco. "The new, modern Office will deliver unparalleled productivity and flexibility for both consumers and business customers. It is a cloud service and will fully light-up when paired with Windows 8."

Here's our list of top 10 features that the new Office has to offer.

1) Touch everywhere - The new Office responds to touch as naturally as it does to keyboard and mouse. One can swipe their finger across the screen or pinch and zoom to read documents and presentations.

2) Inking - Use a stylus to create content, take notes and access features. Handwrite email responses and convert them automatically to text. Stylus can also be used as a laser pointer when presenting. One can also add colour to their content and erase mistakes with ease.

3) Apps - OneNote and Lync represent the first new Windows 8 style applications for Office. These applications are designed to deliver touch-first experiences on a tablet. A new radial menu in OneNote makes it easy to access features with finger.

4) SkyDrive - Office saves documents to SkyDrive by default, which means content is always available across all devices tablet, PC and phone. Documents are also available offline and sync on reconnecting.

5) New subscription services - The new Office is available as a cloud-based subscription service, which means consumers will automatically get future upgrades in addition to exciting cloud services including Skype world minutes and extra SkyDrive storage. Subscribers receive multiple installs for everyone in the family and across their devices.

6) Stay connected - Follow people, teams, documents and sites in SharePoint. View and embed pictures, videos and Office content in activity feeds to stay current and updated.

7) Skype - The new Office comes with Skype, which gives 60 minutes of Skype world minutes every month. Integrate Skype contacts into Lync and call or instant message anyone on Skype.

8) Reading, markup - The Read Mode in Word provides a modern and easy-to-navigate reading experience that automatically adjusts for large and small screens. Zoom in and out of content, stream videos within documents, view revision marks and use touch to turn pages.

9) Digital note-taking - Digital note taking helps keep notes handy in the cloud and across multiple devices with OneNote. One can take notes with touch, pen or keyboard, or use them together and switch easily back and forth.

10) Meetings - PowerPoint features a new Presenter View that privately shows your current and upcoming slides, presentation time, and speaker notes in a single glance. While presenting, one can zoom, mark up and navigate slides with touch and stylus. Lync includes multiparty HD video with presentations, shared OneNote notebooks and a virtual whiteboard for collaborative brainstorming