Android users have the benefit of getting a phone that likely comes with turn-by-turn navigation right out of the box, usually in the form of Google Maps Navigation. Even though many Android users will never use anything but Google Navigation to get from point a to point b, we found that Waze is also free and a better option. More »

News curation startup Scoop.it has arrived on the iPhone today, allowing you to create your own digital magazine while on the go. The app, which works alongside the Scoop.it web service, essentially lets anyone be a publisher for any topic. Or perhaps, the more correct word is not “publisher,” it’s “aggregator.”

Scoop.it “publishers” aren’t always writing and producing their own content, although that is an option. But Scoop.it’s main focus is on its content aggregation tools. Publishers select the best content from around the web and then publish it in a magazine-like format that looks similar to something created by Pressly or OnSwipe. Previously, this curation process was done either through a browser bookmarklet, by accepting content submission from others, or by accepting a post suggested by Scoop.it’s own recommendation engine. Now, with the new iPhone app, curation can be done from your mobile, too.

Using the app, Scoop.it users can select, edit and publish posts, review suggestions and share to their connected Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr accounts.

The app is a handy companion for Scoop.it itself, but only for those who already have their magazine up-and-running. You have to first set up your magazine’s topics via the web – you can’t begin the process using the app. That’s a shame since, for many people, the first time they’ll ever encounter Scoop.it is via the App Store.

News aggregation can be a touchy topic – is it right to re-publish others’ work and brand it as your own, even if you’re sending the sites traffic? Some would say no. But aggregation has proved a successful business model in many cases, and the human-assisted curation that accompanies it, such as what’s provided by Techmeme for example, makes curation a form of content creation itself. Who’s to say that Scoop.it couldn’t form the basis of a thousand tiny, niche Techmeme’s in the future?

Scoop.it is currently a freemium service. Individuals can publish up to 5 topics per account, but have to use Scoop.it’s own branding. Business accounts offer more topics and features, including domain hosting and analytics for $79/month.

The Scoop.it iPhone app is here.

Windows has more antivirus programs than we can count, but we keep coming back to Microsoft's own offering, Security Essentials. It's easy to use, lightweight, and does everything in the background, so you rarely need to interact with it. More »

It's pretty rare that you'll see a virus or any malware pop up on a Mac, but it can happen. That said, we don't feel you need to be using any antivirus software to protect yourself because your diligent mind should be sufficient. Here's why, and also a few antivirus software options that are worth a look should you want a little more protection than you can provide yourself. More »

For a media software package to survive these days, it has to be able to run pretty much anywhere and just recently Plex added the Kindle Fire to its list of supported platforms, uploading its Android client onto Amazon's Appstore. The team hasn't stopped there either, delivering updates across a slew of products starting with its Media Server v0.9.5.2 which added autoupdate and start on login features, while the Media Center package has reached 9.5.2, with support for refresh rate switching as well as a number of other tweaks and fixes. The various clients haven't been forgotten either, with a brand new alpha available for Linux users, individual apps for Android and Google TV, and a new v2.1 for iOS that supports myPlex cloud streaming without the need for users to run the Plex server software locally. Hit the source links for changelogs and more details or just check an app store near you where updated software is no doubt residing for your picture, music, and video streaming pleasure.Plex app available on Kindle Fire, media servers and other clients get new updates too originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Dec 2011 02:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Windows users have a ton of system tweakers to choose from, but we love the Ultimate Windows Tweaker the most. It has a ton of different tweaks you can perform, it's portable, super lightweight, and completely free. More »

If you want to tweak settings and run maintenance scripts in Mac OS X, you can always take it to the command line. On the other hand, you can always turn to one of the few system tweakers available to get the job done from a graphical user interface (GUI). Our favorite is OnyX for its exhaustive feature set that provides both basic and easy options for any kind of user. More »

Alarm clock utilities for Android are a dime-a-dozen, and ultimately choosing the best one comes down to the features you need. Even so, after testing several of the more popular ones on in the Android App Market, we think that Alarm Clock XTreme is the most feature-rich and useful alarm clock available for Android, thanks to its display customization features, unique alarm settings, and more. More »

Jealous of your iOS-carrying companions who have been blasting Asteroids for months on their handsets and tablets? Prepare to quell your rage, as Atari has announced that its Greatest Hits app has launched for Android devices. Surpassing 3.5 million downloads in the iTunes App Store, the company has expanded the offering to Google OS faithful -- and it'll come with Missile Command for free, along with a 100 title catalog looking back on 30 years of gaming. Once you grab that install, you'll have your pick of 25 game packs for a buck each or you can spring for the whole lot for a cool Hamilton. The app is available now for both tablet and smartphone users, should you prefer a larger screen when your Centipede addiction strikes. For a full list of titles, hit the PR button after the break before checking things out for yourself in the Market.Continue reading Atari Greatest Hits app lands in Android Market, Star Raiders awaits your download
Atari Greatest Hits app lands in Android Market, Star Raiders awaits your download originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Nov 2011 08:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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You have many choices for your media streaming needs, and Plex is doing its damnedest to get you onboard its bandwagon. Plex is well known for its multi-platform flexibility, and the arrival of the myPlex media server platform makes sharing your content across devices easier than ever. To go with that cloud capability, Plex has released a new version of its desktop and mobile clients as well. The updated code brings a slick new UI and myPlex support, plus Flash and Silverlight video capability to Plex Media Server along with official Windows support -- including integration with Windows Media Center -- and a laundry list of bug fixes and stability tweaks. A full rundown of all the new goodies plus plenty of screenshots of that revamped UI can be found at the source below.Plex releases new mobile and desktop clients, gets Flash and Silverlight support to go with a fancy new UI originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Be jealous no more Android fans! (OK, maybe a little bit longer.) FL Studio is coming to your mobile OS of choice. No longer will it just be iDevice owners who get to channel their inner 9th Wonder on the go. Soon enough the company will release a version of its loop-based music-creation suite designed to work on both phones and tablets running Google's portable platform. We don't have a price or release date yet but, as a consolation prize, there's a video of the progress being made on the port after the break.Continue reading FL Studio coming to Android, Google fans can make phat beats too
FL Studio coming to Android, Google fans can make phat beats too originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Plex is one of the more popular solutions to the problem of how to get all that (legally downloaded, of course) media sitting on your home PC to your various devices for consumption. But, like many of its competitors, getting the whole shebang set up isn't always the easiest task. The company's new myPlex platform aims to solve this conundrum, and adds a few welcome features along the way. Now, setting up a server or a client is as simple as logging in to your Plex account -- no matter how many of either part of the media-streaming equation you may have. As an added bonus, your account is also now home to a queue that is shared across all devices. Stopped watching a movie half way through on your commute home? You can pick up right where you left off on your Roku. You can even add web clips from sources like YouTube to the list. Check out the source link for a few more details.myPlex makes streaming your media simple, gives you one queue to rule them all originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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There’s a new concept for social networking services taking root, and it’s not about re-creating your offline social graph on the Web, like Facebook does today. It’s about discovering the people who are nearby you now – the ones you probably would like to meet.

This type of discovery mechanism is already being made possible by a number of services, including the checkin apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, the automated discovery of nearby folks via Sonar and Banjo, the group chatting in Yobongo, and the micro-networks that emerge through LoKast. All of these companies are playing with the idea of location-based social networks, attempting to connect you to others around you through varying means.

At this week’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, even more services emerged to compete in this space, too.

The powerful capabilities of today’s mobile smartphones are allowing for a new kind of networking: social discovery services, not social networking services. Discovery services are focused primarily on highlighting the users within close proximity to you and connecting you to those who you might want to meet.

Facebook, meanwhile, aims to connect you to people you already know. “Discovery” on Facebook is limited to searching for names or networks (e.g., schools, workplaces) where the introductions themselves previously took place.

But there are ephemeral, ever-changing social networks that we participate in daily. These have been left largely untapped by Facebook: the people working out at the gym, shopping for groceries, playing basketball, taking their dog to the park, watching their children on the playground, and so on. They’re the networks you stumble into and out of every day, and they aren’t composed of your close friends, Facebook friends or otherwise. They’re just people who share your interests at that same moment in time. The guy ready for a pick-up game of b-ball. The coupon-clipper finding deals at the grocery store. A new puppy’s owners hoping for a doggie play date.

A couple of standout apps from Disrupt hope to better highlight these types of networks by introducing you to the people you want to know.

One, an app called Holler (iTunes), is based around interests and activities. You join a group (surfers, for example) and the app pushes notifications to you when others nearby are interested in the same thing. For now, the groups are pre-built by Holler itself, but it’s in the process of rolling out a system where users can build their own groups. However, there will be some level of filtering and control, so duplicate groups are not created.

Holler is well-designed, with a clean and minimalist layout, which makes it easy to use from first launch. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same problem many other “social” apps do at first – not enough people are using it. To address the issue, Holler’s creators are thinking of exposing all the groups to the app’s users, not just those nearby, which would still allow for socializing around interests. While that may increase engagement, it takes away from the app’s core promise of proximity-based socializing – its mobile meetups on the fly.

In a similar vein, another TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Alley company, Mingle, has built a mobile app that also aims to connect users based on interests. But in Mingle’s case, it’s about introducing yourself to others nearby, in the hopes that you two share an interest, instead of connecting around a commonly held interest like “shopping” or “exercise,” for example.

Mingle users fill out an introduction card and post it to their current location. Others “mingling” at that location can see one another, and take the conversation offline, if desired. It’s what Foursquare could do, if it wasn’t so stuck on listing the “others here” with only an avatar and a first name, last initial (arguably useless information, unless those people are already real-life friends).

A third app from the Startup Alley is a little more out there, but interesting. Called igobubble, this mobile app lets you leave virtual “bubbles” containing text, photos, videos, music and more at a given location. Others can come along later and find your bubble and interact with it, or even change it. You’ll see who has “touched” your bubble and can then chat with them in real-time. There’s more too it than that, but those are the basics.

igobubble feels more art project than the next big hit in mobile socializing, but at least they’re thinking out of the box. Instead of just re-creating the structure of a traditional social networking site (with profiles, listed interests, avatars), it’s thinking that tying content to a location is the first step in enabling mobile social discovery. That’s certainly a different take. It’s not about who you are, it’s about what you did at that location.

Other intriguing ideas in the location-based social space included Disrupt Startup Alley participant Evertale, makers of a mobile app that will map photos to locations for the purpose of instant scrapbooking and remembering old friends, and Audience Choice winner CardFlick, a contact-sharing app for nearby users.

But have any of the new apps (or old ones, for that matter), really hit the nail on the head when it comes to social discovery? Banjo and Sonar are great, but feel more like tools than networks of their own. Yobongo’s chat seems a bit lacking without context. Holler’s mobile meetups can’t work if it can’t gather enough participants. Mingle feels more business-networking driven than social. igobubble is an interesting idea, but doesn’t have the execution down.

It seems like each service could be a part of a bigger whole – a new proximity-based social network that puts location first, people and content second. A new network no one has yet been ambitious enough to attempt to design, so focused on a single niche or feature instead.

Foursquare, at least, has the critical mass to get there, but is stagnating with its continued emphasis on the manual check-in. The company should be increasing automation for regular check-ins, building out user profiles and letting users connect via common interests surfaced by their regular activities. It should suggest new friends based on behaviors combined with “friend-of-a-friend connections.” At the very least, when a big group of friends check-in together, it should alert the users in the group who aren’t connected to each other of the missed opportunity. It should even consider letting users pick and choose add-on services to run within the app. Yobongo’s chat, CardFlick or Mingle’s introductions, and igobubble’s content sharing could all be Foursquare features one day, and not standalone applications, if Foursquare had a wider vision for its future.

In the meantime, it’s fun to experiment with the latest and greatest in proximity-based social networking, thanks to the new TechCrunch Disrupt Alley startups mentioned here and others. Whether any of them will become breakout hits, however, will have to be left for the market to decide.

Credit: Top image via Mingle






Crunchbase





MINGLE
HOLLER
CARDFLICK
EVERTALE
BANJO

FOURSQUARE
YOBONGO
IGOBUBBLE
SONAR.ME






Company:
Mingle


Website:
minglesocialapp.com



Mingle is a mobile product that surfaces human relevance within a proximity. Leveraging location, Mingle allows users to make introductions anywhere they go with hopes that it allows users to interact. Mingle goes beyond sharing interests, usernames or even checking in and provides a relevance graph to provide context in which users use to help them find interesting people.






Learn more





Company:
Holler


Website:
holler.com










Learn more





Company:
CardFlick


Website:
cardflick.co



CardFlick helps you create and share online business cards using your iPhone in one flick.

1 Click login with services like Facebook and then your card is prefilled with your contact using one of our beautiful themes

Share your card with multiple people at a time just by flicking your phone or even email.

New themes can be purchased in app.

Customers are anyone who has a business to promote and wants to network without the hassle.






Learn more





Company:
Evertale


Website:
evertale.com


Launch Date:
January 3, 2011



Evertale is the self-writing scrapbook of your life.

Relive your favorite memories in their completeness. Evertale automatically generates a scrapbo[…]

The crowded tablet market now offers a number of devices in various weights, screen sizes and operating systems. But are there any tablets built to withstand tough treatment from kids?

This week, I tested a tablet aimed at ages 4 through 9: the $100 LeapPad Explorer from LeapFrog Enterprises Inc., a company known for its educational children’s toys. This tablet, which is available in green or pink, has a built-in microphone, camera, video recorder and kid-size stylus for writing and drawing on its five-inch touch screen (a finger also works).

It was designed with tough plastics, a sheet of Mylar over its glass screen and an extra metal frame around the screen to withstand physical abuse. This tablet can be used for reading e-books, playing games and running through digital flashcards.

The LeapPad Explorer is the latest in LeapFrog’s gadget lineup, which started with the original LeapPad educational toy in the late 1990s and more recently continued with the Leapster Explorer hand-held game in July 2010.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Explorer tablet for kids works with over 40 downloadable apps and has a topside slot for running older game cartridges. A spokeswoman said the company expects to offer more than 70 apps by the end of this year, and has no plans to stop selling cartridges. Cartridges cost $25 each and downloadable activities—including games, apps, flash cards, videos and eBooks—range from $5 to $20 each.

While using the LeapPad Explorer, I discovered plenty of features that would appeal to young kids like fun sounds, on-screen graphics and a sense of accomplishment while progressing through books, games and activities.

The main appeal of the LeapFrog products is the company’s focus on personalized education. When children set up the Explorer, they enter their grades, ranging from prekindergarten to sixth grade. The device’s activities then automatically tune to a child’s capabilities. This means that if a third-grader is performing at a higher level than is expected for that age, the Explorer adjusts to a slightly higher level, and the child is notified and congratulated. However, if a child is progressing at a lower level, the system adjusts to a slightly lower level without notifying the child.

A feature called the LeapFrog Learning Path lets parents digitally track their child’s progress. Whenever the Explorer is plugged into a computer, details about the child’s time on the device are transferred to the PC so a parent knows how the child is performing and can get tips on how to help the child improve.

LeapPad Explorer comes with three apps and a free app of choice.
The activities address spelling, phonics, math, creativity, science, music and geography. And because of LeapFrog’s partnership with Disney-Pixar, kids will likely recognize characters from movies in the Explorer’s games and books.

My favorite app was the Ultra eBook, “Cars 2: Project Undercover.” LeapFrog’s ultra eBooks are like eBooks on steroids. They let kids record themselves reading an entire book and play it back. They’re animated and have six built-in comprehension activities and three games. They offer stories written at three text levels and they use a visual dictionary for vocabulary development. “Cars 2: Project Undercover” is the only Ultra eBook currently available, but LeapFrog plans to add six more to its app store before the end of the year.

LeapFrog designed the Explorer tablet with certain features that keep its cost down, and some also solve child-safety concerns. For instance, the Explorer lacks a wireless connection, so kids can’t get online without plugging the tablet into a Windows PC or Mac. Downloading apps also requires a parent’s password.

Another example is that the LeapPad Explorer runs on four AA batteries rather than the rechargeable lithium ion batteries found in most regular tablets.

LeapFrog’s spokeswoman said this keeps the cost low and noted that Li-Ion batteries can leak, making them unsafe for kids’ toys. Kids can plug the Explorer into the wall with a $10 AC adapter.

The Explorer is a far cry from popular tablets. The device’s one-inch thickness makes it chunkier than most grown-up tablets and its screen is of a lower quality than that of iPads and Android tablets. Its built-in camera has resolution of less than one megapixel. I found the tablet’s response time to be a bit sluggish, but doubt most kids under 9 would.

Each Explorer tablet comes loaded with three apps and a free app of choice (eBook, game or video) from the LeapFrog Connect app store, accessible via computer once the tablet is plugged in via USB cord. Preloaded apps include a pet game, which gives kids a pet to care for, Story Studio for creating stories with photos, voice-overs and art, and Art Studio for drawing and painting with various colors and stamped images.

Though the LeapPad Explorer looks a bit chubby compared with regular tablets, its features will be adequate for kids. Its ability to grow over time with more downloaded apps makes it a smart investment for parents.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katherine.boehret@wsj.com

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lot of people can get through life without having to stray far from 12 point Times New Roman. Maybe 13 if they're cheating on a paper. But typography is fascinating—and this app's great for pros and novices.

Typography Insight, developed by Parsons design student Dong Yoon Park, is sort of like an iPad typeface encyclopedia. Only encyclopedias are boring, and Typography Insight is beautiful and fun. With a wonderful and decently responsive interface, you can beef up on type terminology (do you know what an ascender is? A baseline?) compare fonts with a nifty overlay mode, or just get all up in their perfect formed faces to appreciate and learn nuances. Park says the type trove will be available in the App Store "soon,"—though no word on whether it'll be a freebie or not. Either way, the guy's got a gift for interfaces, and made this typography geek very happy. [Typography Insight]