Betanews | Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

Spectral Souls (ENG)

| JPY 1,200 | HyperDevbox Studio

10 best apps for Galaxy Tab 10.1, Xoom, and Android Honeycomb in general | Software News - Betanews - Betanews | Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

Spectral Souls Another expensive app at $14.76, Spectral Souls is a full-scale tactical role playing game that shines especially brightly because it's exclusive to Android. Android doesn't yet have anything quite as graphically mind-blowing as Infinity Blade on iOS, but Spectral Souls is no less impressive thanks to its sheer size. Hyperdevbox Studio says it has "hundreds of hours" of gameplay, 82 characters, and 52 different soundtracks. Dolphin Browser HD The first third-party Android exclusive browser has gained lots of traction since debuting on Android 1.6 late last year, garnering more than a million downloads since that time. This tablet-centric version has a big, clean UI, and supports the use of plug-ins such as Adobe Flash. It is a solid alternative browser, and we're quite big fans of those. Opera Mobile 11 Speaking of alternative browsers, Opera users have a full Honeycomb-compatible version of Opera Mobile 11 that delivers the familiar Opera experience with general reliability, although like other Android versions of Opera, it is comparatively a very large application download. Electrum This lightweight and affordable drum machine application has been around for more than two years and has gotten a UI overhaul for Honeycomb tablets. It's a good app for what I like to call "junk musicians," or people who don't need a full production suite with oodles of plug-ins, and who are quite satisfied with the ability to build their own sample set and then sequence it. Newsr Chris Stewart, the maker of Tweetcomb, made Google Reader app Newsr in an admirably clean and simple fashion. First, there's no linking out; all content, including flash video, is kept inside the text window on the right side of the interface, and articles can be shared via bluetooth, email, Facebook or Twitter all from within the app. Google Reader is a Read More

Wuala

| FREE | LaCie

Wuala for Android outpaces iOS version | Software News - Betanews - Betanews | Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

Wuala, the online backup arm of hard-drive manufacturer LaCie, has announced the immediate availability of Wuala for Android, an app for accessing Wuala storage accounts on the Android platform. Following hot on the heels of Wuala for iPhone and iPad, the Android app allows users to both access files already backed up to their Wuala account, plus upload files to their backup space from the phone. This latter functionality is currently exclusive to the Android app -- iPhone/iPad users can only access existing backups, not add new files from the iOS device. Wuala is an online backup service like any other, with a few noteworthy features. First, unlike rival services like Dropbox, all files are encrypted or decrypted on the user's computer or mobile device prior to uploading or downloading, which means Wuala isn't in a position to hand over a user's files to any third party. Second, it offers a wide range of tariffs. Finally, Wuala stands alone in offering a free online backup service through trading online storage space for free space on a user's computer. The minimum qualification is that a computer is online for four or more hours a day, and the amount of space available is calculated by the amount of space made available on the user's computer multiplied by the percentage of time they're online in a day, so someone giving up 100GB of space for the minimum four hours (17 percent) would get 17GB; leave the computer on for eight hours a day (34 percent) and the available storage space is doubled. Storage can be divided across multiple computers, but they must all be online for the minimum required time Other restrictions may apply -- see the Wuala FAQ for details. Get more applications news like this at Software Crew. Read More

EventJot

| FREE | Ricoh Co., Ltd.

EventJot for iOS and Android takes on Color | Software News - Betanews - Betanews | Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

Ricoh, the Japanese company best known for its printers and imaging equipment, released a social photo sharing app for iOS and Android on Thursday called EventJot which seeks to be a slightly more conservative version of Color. In late March, there was a big buzz spike for a mobile app called Color. That app lets users create group photo albums where any user could upload and share their photos as long as they're in a certain location, as determined by their GPS. The idea is that users at big events such as political rallies, sporting events, concerts, parties, and so forth can all take pictures that are automatically cataloged and indexed according to date, time, location, and event. Color became an immediate target for criticism because its creators took an extremely laissez-faire stance on privacy; once you attend an event that another user also attended, you can then view essentially ALL of their photos (past and future) and the photos of their friends. Essentially, there is very little privacy in Color, and it was intended to be that way. EventJot is meant to do roughly the same thing as Color, but it does not use GPS data to connect strangers. Instead, users create unique "events" that anyone can add photos or comments to irrespective of their location. These events actually look and feel like simple message board comment threads -in a good way- and don't require any resizing or significant fixing of pictures. Once you download EventJot, all you need is a Twitter ID, and you can get started by creating an event, or joining into one that has already been opened. Currently, a Twitter ID is the only way users can sign onto the service. Operation is very simple. Each event page is headed by a tally of users participating, Read More

Yahoo! Search for Android

| FREE | Yahoo! Inc.

Yahoo drops new Android apps for Mail and Messenger | Software News - Betanews - Betanews | Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

Hooking up Android's email client to a Yahoo! account was not typically a simple affair. With Gmail and Windows Live Hotmail, you could just type in your email address and password, and the Android client would set it up for you. Yahoo mailboxes could be hooked up, but only through manual setup, and casual users unfamiliar with incoming and outgoing server settings often hit a brick wall. As the resident "Android guy" of my peers, I've had to set up at least half a dozen different devices to connect to Yahoo mailboxes. Today, Yahoo has made it a whole lot easier to check Yahoo user email with the release of a standalone app for Android. With the app, users can receive push notification of new emails; send emails to Yahoo contacts or in-phone address book contacts; use rich text formatting in messages; search messages by sender, recipient, subject or keyword; view and download attachments; and upload photos as attachments directly from the device's camera or from the photo gallery; Additionally, Yahoo has released a new Yahoo Messenger app which can be launched directly from the Mail app. Once inside it, users can message friends, check friends' status updates and availability or update their own; Send instant messages via SMS text message; receive push notifications of messages; and send photos directly from the camera or gallery. The new Yahoo apps for Android, and the Yahoo search widget can all be downloaded in the Android Market immediately. Read More

Twitter

| FREE | Twitter, Inc.

Twitter finally releases its official Android app | Software News - Betanews - Betanews | Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

It's been quite a week for Android apps. It started with the early release of two major browsers and has closed out with the release of the platform's first official Twitter app. Until now, Android has been a battleground for third-party Twitter solutions with more than 20 major competitors jockeying to be the "most official" Twitter app for the platform. But this is undoubtedly one of the cleanest looking Twitter apps available, and certainly the one most tightly woven into the Android architecture. In Twitter's blog today, Leland Rechis wrote, "When apps work well with each other, sharing becomes as second nature on machines as it does in person. The Android platform is really good at that, and we've worked with the Android team to make it super easy to share what's happening." So the team worked with Google to create the app, but unfortunately the final product is only available on devices running version 2.1 and up. Rechis reminded users of older Android versions that they can always use mobile.twitter.com. Irrespective of the limited device support, this is a highly useful and enjoyable app to use. It comes with large and small homescreen widgets, the Twitter contact information of your friends can be integrated into your address book, the Google Talk app, or any app that uses the QuickContact bar which debuted in "Eclair" (Android 2.0). Photos uploaded to Twitpic or yfrog are presented as thumbnails in the Twitter timeline, and tweets that share the user's location can be immediately pulled up in the Google Maps application. The app includes a handful of subtle animations such as the trending topics popping up as speech bubbles on the home screen, and a scrolling background of animated clouds. These can, of course, be turned off in the settings menu where the rest Read More

Dial2Do Hands-free Assistant

| FREE | powered by Dial2Do

'Hands-off' review of Dial2Do's solution to the texting and driving problem | Software News - Betanews - Betanews | Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

Back in December, I tried to enable everything I use on my Motorola Droid with text-to-speech, with only limited success. Ideally, I would have been able to have all of my incoming text-based media from Twitter, RSS, e-mail, and SMS read aloud to me so I could use my phone while driving. Unfortunately, Android's built in TalkBack functionality is very limited, and the talking apps I've tried are also pretty limited in what they do. But with safe driving legislation in committee in Congress, and a growing list of states that have banned texting while driving, the market for eyes- and hands-free phone interfaces is hot. At CTIA last week, there was actually a whole section of the show floor dedicated strictly to safe driving solutions, and a number of hardware manufacturers, like LG, addressed the topic in their booths as well. So I found a couple of services that approximately do what I wanted to do back in December, and checked them out. One of them is Dial2Do, which utilizes text-to-speech and voice recognition software to let a user check her e-mail, calendars, Twitter feeds, SMS, weather updates and news feeds, personal notes, and a growing list of other services without using her hands or eyes. With the free Dial2Do Android app, you can have your incoming text messages read aloud to you as they arrive, and you can create 20-second audio notes which are transcribed and e-mailed to you. Access to all the other functionality of Dial2Do costs $3.99 per month ($39.99 per year.) When you hit "hands-free assistant" in the Android app, it dials into the local Dial2Do menu system. From there, you can then use voice commands to access your different linked services. Saying "Send a text to [contact name]," for example, will give you 30 seconds Read More