PhotoBox! comes to Android, the 'Lightroom for Facebook'
Mobile app developer WeaverMobile USA announced on Thursday that its formerly iOS-exclusive photography management app PhotoBox! has launched on Android.
The application can be thought of as "Lightroom for Facebook," giving users the ability to find, manage, add effects to, and share photos posted to Facebook, as well as perform batch uploads and downloads, to tag/untag, like/unlike, and comment. It provides a pretty robust toolkit for editing photos, adding filters, drawing, and adding text.
Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Nokia Lumia 900 is a fair comparison
Discussion Counterpoint. Colleague Tim Conneally and I got into a heated debate about smartphone comparisons this morning. He has the Nokia Lumia 900 Windows Phone for review (and I -- whaaaaa -- don't). I suggested Tim do a comparison with Google-branded Galaxy Nexus, which we both have. He refused. Tim was quite adamant about it, too. His out-and-out refusal clearly taps into strong feelings about how products are compared.
We bantered back and forth over group chat, with neither of our positions changing. "Buyers make these product comparisons all the time", I expressed late in our debate. "I can see we won't agree. If I had the Lumia 900, I would compare them". But I don't, and Tim won't. So I suggested: "Let's ask the readers...something like: 'Would you like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Nokia Lumia 900 compared?'"
Stop comparing unlike objects. RIGHT. NOW.
Discussion Point. Joe Wilcox asked me to write an article comparing the Nokia Lumia 900 to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. I refused. Here is why. Read Joe's response.
Anyone who knows about marketing should readily understand market segmentation: it is a way of isolating customers/users/consumers by type. It could be geographically, it could be demographically, it could be psychographically, or it could be through some other defining characteristic.
iPhone to appear on three more regional carriers April 20
Where can you get the iPhone other than AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint? Plenty of places, as long as you're not on T-Mobile.
A host of regional wireless carriers announced Wednesday that they will carry the iPhone in a move that may surprise some industry watchers. This includes Waynesboro, Va.-based nTelos, Green Bay, Wisc.-based Cellcom, and Anchorage, Alaska's Alaska Communications. The regionals will offer the iPhone 4 and 4S at a $50 discount to the major carriers, and join southern US regional carrier C Spire, who has offered the iPhone since October of last year.
Uh-oh, iPhone fanboys
iPhone Idolators, please meet the Android Army. Now retreat! Android's share of the US smartphone market topped 50 percent in February, according to comScore. iOS gained share but trails considerably -- by like 20 points. You can have your iPhone, but many more Americans take Android. I'm waiting. What's your smarty-pants response to that, Apple apologists?
The findings butt against those from Nielsen -- a life raft of apology for those insisting iPhone will rule the world. Last week, Nielsen reported a huge surge in the number of new purchasers choosing iPhones compared to Android. For the three months ending in February, 48 percent of Americans who recently bought a smartphone, chose Android -- 43 percent iPhone, according to Nielsen. A year earlier, 27 percent of new acquirers chose Android versus 10 percent for iPhone.
Some proof as to why I think the Nokia Lumia 900 camera is 'special' [slideshow]
[portfolio_slideshow id=67058]
One of the qualities of the Nokia Lumia 900 that I singled out in my favorable review of the device was its camera, which I described as "special." In the slideshow above, I've included the photos I snapped that helped me arrive at that conclusion.
Recompose photos with Seam Carving GUI
If you’re unhappy with the composition of a photo then your first instinct may be to crop it, removing areas without important visual content to help the viewer concentrate on whatever is left. But this can only go so far. And if there’s plenty of content at the edge of the photo then you may hardly be able to crop the image at all.
Content-aware image resizing (CAIR) provides another, more intelligent way to reframe your shot. Essentially it allows you to define content you’d like to remove from a photo, wherever it might be, and can then strip it out (hopefully without leaving any trace). And as a result the image will shrink in size, sometimes dramatically, but you still retain the core content. (If you’re not sure what we mean then the relevant Wikipedia page has some sample images which should make everything clear.)
How do you rate Larry Page's first year as Google CEO?
On April 4, 2011, Larry Page returned as Google's chief executive after a decade's repast. In his first year back on the job, Google has dramatically changed. I planned to write a massive reflective story, but thought it'd be better if you did. A story with your assessment of Page and Google will be more interesting, and revealing, about the company and perceptions about it. I'll collect your comments here and put them together into a follow-up post. To get you started, I'll do a quickie review of Google over the last 12 months and call out a few highlights.
At the start of 2011, I called it the "year of Google", and it was. Much credit belongs to Page as he axed services not core to the Google lifestyle, acquired Motorola Mobility and refocused the company on rapid iteration. Just look how far Android and Chrome advanced over the last 12 months or how quickly Google+ went from conception to 100 million-plus users. If 2011 wasn't the year of Larry Page, 2012 will be. But will you like it, or what he has done to Google?
Review: Nokia Lumia 900 unquestionably raises Windows Phone to a higher level
This could be the easiest review I've ever written: The Nokia Lumia 900 is absolutely top-notch hardware at an affordable price, and it has everything it takes to be a giant success.
Last week, we established that 60% of BetaNews readers want this phone, and you know what? After one week with this device, I can conclusively say that our readers' desire to own the Lumia 900 is completely warranted.
Xara Web Designer MX 8 Premium review
Some people see WYSIWYG web builders as basic, limited, strictly for novice home users who’ll be satisfied with the poor quality templates and limited customisation options they usually offer.
Xara Web Designer MX 8 Premium, fortunately, has a very different philosophy.
Citrix aims to become the Red Hat of cloud computing with CloudStack
Citrix is making its mark on open-source cloud computing, following CloudStack software's release to the Apache Foundation. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based technology company acquired the rights to CloudStack with last year's Cloud.com acquisition. Citrix is a significant contributor to another open-source cloud computing platform called OpenStack, and one of the earliest members.
RackSpace and NASA jointly created OpenStack in 2010. Since that time, the project has amassed nearly 150 contributors including Dell, AMD, Intel, HP and AT&T. It aims to be an alternative to Amazon Web Services, which is a popular platform for IT deployments looking to embrace the cloud.
Instagram, the iPhone's best app, finally comes to Android
Instagram dutifully led the charge of vintage camera filter apps, but did so as an iOS exclusive since its beginnings in 2010.
Today, after effectively "conquering" iOS by being named Apple's iPhone app of the year for 2011, Instagram has moved onto the next great frontier, the Android platform.
Keep your hard drive in shipshape with Uniblue MaxiDisk
Taking care of your computer can easily turn into a full time job, so it makes sense to delegate at least some of the responsibility to a third party tool. Uniblue PowerSuite is an impressive collection of maintenance tools that can be used to manage the registry, keep drivers up to date, clean out junk files and much more. The latest addition to the suite is MaxiDisk, a defrag tool that makes it simple to keep your hard drive shipshape -- and there are a few extra options to investigate as well.
At its heart, MaxiDisk is a fairly basic defragmentation tool, but if all you have used in the past is the one that is built into Windows, it is a great leap forward. The analysis process is completed faster than Windows’ defragmenter and you are provided with basic information about the layout of the data on your drive, along with an indication of whether or not defragging is required. The re-organization of files on your disk is something that unavoidably takes time, but it is something that is well worth doing.
Genie Timeline 2012 backs up your PC with Windows 8 Metro style
Genie9 has released the latest edition of its flagship backup tool, Timeline 2012.
The program’s emphasis remains very much on ease of use, but there are some practical new features, too. Genie Timeline’s new Metro-style Smart Selection screen makes it very easy to choose the type of files you’d like to back up for instance: Office files, emails, bookmarks, videos, pictures, whatever it might be.
Google isn't trying to save Android tablets but kill Kindle Fire
Rumors about Google's forthcoming tablet are increasing, which astounds me -- as they portray this as something new. Hey, Google already formally stated it would produce an Android tablet. The rumormongers have got the reasons wrong, too. Google isn't gunning for Apple but Amazon.
The retail giant is by far the biggest competitive threat standing before Android today. Amazon has customized Android, released its own hardware, ditched Google's browser for its own Silk, established a viable app store alternative to Google Play and created a curated user experience that rivals Apple's. In just one quarter, Amazon's Kindle Fire jumped ahead of all other Android tablets, putting it second to iPad. Every Kindle Fire sold is one more brick in the wall blocking the success of the broader Android ecosystem.



