Reviews

All Things Appy: Top 5 Ratings Apps for iOS
May 08, 2013

Whatever you think of the controversy that periodically springs up over some ratings websites, they are undoubtedly useful for gathering information about businesses, products and services. Here we take a look at some of the best specialist ratings and search apps for iOS. At the top of the list is Yelp, which provides crowdsourced localized search for businesses close by.

Adobe Photoshop Touch Is Almost Picture Perfect
May 03, 2013

With tablets possibly on track to overtake PCs within a few years, one might wonder just how that's going to happen. Can tablets really perform as well as PCs in professional environments? I for one am still unpacking my laptop when it comes to power applications like imaging. Well, Adobe claims it now delivers its core Adobe Photoshop functionality in an app for Android tablets.

Sky HDTV Could Make Your Cord-Cutting Decision Easy
April 30, 2013

It's hardly a surprise that cable and satellite television service providers are in trouble. Take decades of complacency, add in mostly awful customer service, mix liberally with resistance to change, and you have an industry heading toward self-inflicted extinction.

All Things Appy: 5 Best Windows 8 Sports Apps
April 24, 2013

You can do a whole lot more than watch your favorite sports on television these days if you take advantage of a second screen. The concept is simple: The big TV screen provides the visual action, while your laptop or tablet dishes out in-depth analysis and social media commentary on the side. Windows 8 has some superb apps for this purpose.

Hailo Is a Hellaciously Good Taxi-Hailing App
April 19, 2013

Chicagoans and Bostonians, you have a new way of hailing a cab. It's called "Hailo," and it lets you grab a taxi by app command, rather than an arm raise at the curb. Hailo is coming soon to New York and Washington, D.C., and already is available in Toronto and several European cities. Hailo is different from some other taxi apps in that its relationship is with the individual driver, not with an entire fleet.

All Things Appy: Top 5 Chrome Finance Apps
April 17, 2013

It's mid-April, and spring is in the air -- that time of year when a young man's or young lady's thoughts turn to money. Conveniently for us all, the Web browser is a fine place to organize finances, whether you want to get the process over with as fast as possible, or enjoy it in king-is-in-the-counting-house mode. Google's Chrome Web browser is resplendent with numerous add-ons fit for the purpose.

aText - Your Friendly Keystroke Slasher
April 16, 2013

Few people like typing. Even fewer like typing the same things over and over again. That dislike is at the root of aText, which lets you create your own abbreviations to speed things along. For example, a typing shortcut, or snippet, such as "jpm" could become "by John P. Mello Jr." While simple text can be used to make substitutions, you can do much more than that, too.

Tripit Trips Up at the First Sign of Anything Tricky
April 12, 2013

Tripit is a frequent flier travel organizer. It claims to sculpt your mishmash of itineraries, dinner arrangements and meetings into a functioning, unified whole -- all accessible through your mobile device. The idea is that you email your airline, and other itineraries to it, and it then "does the rest." That's a big claim, and in my experience big claims in new technology concepts often don't deliver.

All Things Appy: 5 Best Firefox Education Add-ons
April 10, 2013

Nothing beats the raw power of laptop and browser for academia and research. Firefox plays well in this combo with numerous academic apps that it calls "Add-ons." This week TechNewsWorld takes a look at the top five must-have education and academia tools within the Firefox environment. They include translation, article clipping, research management, old-school highlighting and power toolbars.

iTwin Connect Doubles the Pleasure of Remote PC Access
April 05, 2013

I am going out of town. And what do I do? I copy all my crucial files over to a high-capacity USB drive so I can have access to my documents on the road. That works to a degree. However, nothing beats having access to my desktop when I'm away from my PC. Fortunately, there is a device that gives you secure access to your desktop or another designated computer from remote locations.

News360: Getting to Know You at a Snail's Pace
April 05, 2013

News360, a learning news aggregator for Android, has recently been updated. I decided to take a look. Uniquely, this app uses a thumbs-up button style of interaction in combination with collected statistics to provide stories that are supposed to be customized for you.

All Things Appy: Top 5 iOS Video Camera Apps
April 03, 2013

Video cameras have been one of the killer hardware features in the smartphone revolution, and Apple's iOS platform for iPads and iPhones has made an important contribution to the video camera app market. Twitter's Vine lets you create arty 6-second looping videos for distribution on social networks including Facebook, Twitter and the Vine network.

BioShock Infinite Raises the Roof
April 02, 2013

Video game franchises typically run a predictable course. Create something unique, and if it's a hit, crank out a few more of the same. This is why some good series eventually stumble. Irrational Games likely pondered this when it began developing the second sequel to the groundbreaking BioShock. How do you follow-up a smash game that takes players to a strange and fascinating underwater city?

Relax and Sleep: Whatever Floats Your Dream Boat
March 29, 2013

Relax and Sleep Plus lets you choose and play ambient sounds that might help you sleep. I tried this app during a grueling jet-lagged visit to London. The UK has a seven-hour time difference from Los Angeles, which is my home base, so my day started there just as I normally would be going to sleep. For me, the net result of the time change was sleeplessness in the dead of local night.

All Things Appy: 5 Best Android News Apps
March 27, 2013

With the unexpected news that Google's RSS feed reader, Google Reader, is being put out to pasture, many users are scrambling to find new tools for news consumption. There are still plenty of excellent free news apps out there, and here's a look at the top five available for the Android platform. Google Currents is a pretty, magazine-like aggregator with a true offline solution that works well in airplane mode.

HP's Officejet Pro Does 1 Thing Extremely Well
March 26, 2013

The HP Officejet Pro X551dw doesn't scan, doesn't copy, doesn't fax, and obviously doesn't make coffee. It is, however, among the best single-use printers you could get in a small-to-medium sized office environment. It is fast, it operates at a low cost, and although it doesn't do those aforementioned things, it does much more.

pwSafe Cracks the Safe-Password Problem
March 26, 2013

Hardly a day goes by without a data breach making the news or a social media account being hacked. That kind of news can be unsettling to many of us and leave us wondering how we can better protect our online security. One way to address the problem is to beef up your first line of defense against hackers: the passwords to your online accounts.

SimCity Is More Magical Than Mundane
March 22, 2013

The latest version of the long-running SimCity was a long time coming, and when it finally arrived, server issues kept many gamers from getting to the good stuff. It's been nearly a decade since the release of SimCity 4, and now the fifth version -- titled simply SimCity -- is offering gamers the chance to once again build the city of their dreams.

Pie Control Pro Is a GUI Delight
March 22, 2013

The early-90s Windows 3.11 operating system offered a graphical user interface that was a breakthrough for me. It was, in fact, my first GUI. I'd been using command-line, error-prone MS-DOS for two or three years before that, and it was a delight to suddenly be able to maximize screens, switch programs, and point around with a mouse, after living with the syntactically regimented MS-DOS.

All Things Appy: Top 5 Chrome Entertainment Apps
March 20, 2013

Here's a look at the top five must-have free entertainment apps for the Chrome Web-browser based platform. Google's Chrome Web browser features three types of add-ons -- Web apps, themes and extensions -- available at the Chrome Web Store. Crackle, owned by Sony, supplies a vast array of free movies on demand. They aren't the latest, but they are full-length and uncut, and a lot of them were blockbusters at one time.