With Oscars just around the corner, Yahoo! reminded us to try out their IntoNow application, which is available for iOS and Android-based devices. Using it, you will be able to add some interactivity when watching the Oscars. For instance, IntoNow users can: Some of us will be at Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress so we won’t be able to watch the big event. However, we’ll find a way to entertain ourselves even without the Hollywood stars. Iberian ham may not look as sexy as Scarlett Johansson, but it can keep your mind occupied in a different way. Hit the link below to grab IntoNow for your smartphone and enjoy the second screen experience for the Oscars. Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical Read More

The Super Bowl is going to be played this weekend and research suggests that many of you will be using a smartphone or tablet during the Big Game. Thanks to a new promotion, using the IntoNow app during the game could give you an opportunity to win free Pepsi for life. The promotion is a partnership between Yahoo and Pepsi MAX and it does involve a few steps. First, you have to download the IntoNow app, which uses audio cues to identify what you’re watching on television. Then, you have to watch the NFL Honors award show on Feb. 4 (9 p.m. EST) and tag it with the app. During the Super Bowl, use the app and when the Pepsi Max ad plays, it will unlock your entry into the contest. Whether you like Pepsi Max or not, I find it interesting that many companies are utilizing smartphones and tablets during Read More

The days of a mobile device living or dying on the strength of its operating system are gone. Now, it’s all about the apps. An OS will make it pleasant to use those apps, and will probably give you a reason to use the device more, but the real value-add is the apps available in the device’s ecosystem. Apple’s iOS is undoubtedly the king when it comes to sheer volume of class-A apps. The list of marquee apps for the platform that are simply delightful to use is long. That’s not necessarily the case for Android, where the lower barrier-of-entry for app makers can at times be difficult to wade through the crap to find the gold. That’s why this list of ‘Android niceties‘ is welcome. It’s a Tumblr, shared by developers Steven Troughton Smith and Sam Steele on Twitter that I feel is pretty packed with good examples of Android apps that don’t suck. The list Read More

IntoNow might be more aptly named Into TV. If you like to watch the tube, share your viewing habits, and learn more about the shows and movies you watch, this is your app. People say it’s like the SHAZAM service, except for television. With the SHAZAM app, you press a button, let the app “listen” to just about any song in the world playing over your car radio, home stereo or wherever, and the service reports back the song title and the artist, and provides a link to buy it. Using IntoNow, you can “listen” to anything on TV – including shows, old and new, on demand fare, movies, whatever — and the app will recognize it. In my testing, this worked very well. You can share what you’re watching over Facebook or Twitter with a tap, although I’m guessing there are some “guilty pleasure” shows that each of us would Read More

Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so. This edition focuses only on new apps. The game roundup from this week can be found here and the tablet app roundup here. Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info. Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here: The greatest file manager on Windows now has a little brother on Android, and it quickly pushed both Astro and Root Explorer off my devices. It's free, it has root support, many advanced features, and, of course, 2 panes. It looks even better on tablets. Download v1.0 beta 10 from here.    Peel is a fun way to find TV Shows that you and Read More

This is the beginning of your last month of summer. Use the power of Android apps to eke all the goodness out of these peaceful days. Send your text messages to your PC with DeskSMS, track your TV watching with IntoNow, and meditate on a solution to Quell. My only complaint about text messaging is the tiny keyboard. DeskSMS solves this problem. This service forwards your SMS messages to Gmail and Google Chat so that you can use your PC to read and respond to text messages. Best of all, when you reply, the recipients will get a text message from your phone number. It’s an open beta so check it out for yourself – but the developers warn you might encounter a few bugs. Call this Shazam! for TV. Point your phone’s camera at the TV, press the button and IntoNow will find what the show is, which episode you’re Read More