Category: Mobile

  • Manage your gift cards with Gyft app

    Manage your gift cards with Gyft app

    Gift cards can be a convenient gift for the holidays, but who likes carrying around all those useless, environmentally unfriendly plastic rectangles? Certainly not me, which is why the free application Gyft is perfect, an application that not only aggregates our gift cards, but allows us to buy and gift others with gift cards from a variety of major…

  • Get curious and play the mobile game Curiosity

    Curiosity is not your average mobile game. It doesn’t tell you to knock down forts built by pigs, it doesn’t ask you to draw something, and it definitely doesn’t ask you to harvest a field. No, all that Curiosity asks is for you to answer one simple question: What’s inside the cube? This simplistic, mysterious…

  • The last missing iPad feature: pressure sensitivity

    Every time a new iPad (or any Apple device) is released, people ask, “What can Apple do better?” This often happens within 30 seconds of the new product announcement. With the iPad people are usually expecting a thinner and lighter device, a better camera, a faster processor, and possibly better speakers. Nothing too spectacular or…

  • How to create Instagram-style photos without Instagram

    Instagram is a sinking ship. Don’t worry, I don’t mean that Instagram is going anywhere. After their $1 billion acquisition from Facebook (well, it ended up being more like $741 million after Facebook’s stock price tanked), they don’t have much to worry about anymore. Now that Instagram is financially secure and under the protective wing…

  • Holiday Gift Guide 2012: Creativity and Digital Artist Edition

    When I am not writing I am an art teacher and an illustrator, and I am always looking for cool toys to help me with my artwork. Here’s a few that I have tried that could make great gifts for the creative person in your family. Wacom Input Tablets One of the best investments I…

  • 3 free apps to replace SMS on your mobile phone

    Depending how old you are, you may be able to remember the time where text messaging was the next big thing in the cell phone world. Before iPhones and other smartphones, text messaging was the preferred way of contact for millions of people across the country, and it was particularly popular with the younger crowd.…

  • Google Nexus 7 tablet: The specs drill-down

    Google Nexus 7 tablet: The specs drill-down

    Not long ago, Apple took the full impact of the tech limelight by releasing the iPhone 5 and their next generation iPads. Its competitors, with one such example being Google, had earlier announced a branded 7-inch tablet, the Google Nexus 7. In the making of the $200 tablet, Google knew that they had to beat…

  • Game review: Eufloria HD is a relaxing, ambient strategy game

    When most people think about strategy games, they probably imagine scenarios pitting orcs against humans, or the U.S. versus the U.S.S.R, or maybe the Vasari versus the Advent. What they probably don’t think of is space battles between rival groups of plants, but that’s the premise of Eufloria HD, a real-time strategy(RTS) game recently ported…

  • How technology companies are improving voice recognition software

    While voice recognition software has certainly improved in the two decades, it hasn’t exactly been the blockbuster tech that Ray Kurzweil predicted. My first experiments with the technology were playing around with Microsoft’s Speech API (circa Windows 95) and early versions of Dragon Naturally Speaking. Both were interesting as “toys” but didn’t work well enough…

  • Free Disney apps for iOS and your toddler

    As I mentioned in my last article, Tablets and your pre-schooler: Is it a good idea?, I will be doing an ongoing series about apps for the preschool age student available for iOS devices. These articles will cover apps that are played with constantly in my house and that are educational (no Angry Birds suggestions…