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Air Playit – Streaming Video & Music to iPhone iPad and Android

Gadget News — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:05:55 +0000

If you ever wanted to play some music or video that you have on your computer on your smartphone or tablet, you know that it’s usually quite cumbersome to do it – you have to copy the files, find a good player and more often than not, convert the video files because they’re too large or because the format is not supported by the player, which can take quite a long time (hours, in fact).

But there’s another solution, which doesn’t require all that and doesn’t even require that you connect your mobile device to your computer – streaming. Until recently, there were only a few good apps that can be used for streaming media for the iPhone and iPad (Air Sharing comes to mind), and pretty much none for Android.

There is however, one app that works on both iOS and Android and allows you to stream music and video straight from your computer, without having to deal with any complicated set ups or cables. It’s called Air Playit and it’s freely available for download at airplayit.com.

The app is pretty good, and while it’s obviously geared towards iOS users (it also first became available on the iTunes store, and was only recently released for Android), but the Android app works perfectly fine, and it looks nice, as well.

The way Air Playit works is simple – the software is divided in two sides, the server, which you need to install on your computer, and the client, which is the app for your phone or tablet. Air Playit works on both Mac OS X and Windows, and yes, you can stream from Mac OS X to Android and from Windows to an iPhone, no problems with that.

I tested the app on Windows with an Android smartphone. The setup on both Windows and Android is a breeze – just run the installer and wait for it to finish. Then you’re good to go right away – the default settings match on the client and server, and the only thing you need to do is add the folders with music and video that you want to share and indicate the IP of your server on the phone.

You can further customize the settings if you want to – change the password, enable NVidia CUDA for fast file conversion, enable access via HTTP, and that’s pretty much it – it’s a simple app, actually.

My Android phone connected to the server instantly and it saw all the folders right away, I’ve got the chance to test the streaming capabilities since all media files were immediately showing up! I had a few photos in JPEG format, a few songs in MP3 format and a couple of videos in AVI format and not only all of them were accessible from Local AirPlayit server, but I’ve watched a movie on my phone without any issues.

I uninstalled both the server and client, and it was very straightforward – just close the app and uninstall it from the Control Panel in Windows and Application Management in Android.

So, if you want a simple app that will let you stream media from your computer (even via 3G from anywhere in the world using your external IP!), you should definitely give Air Playit a go – it’s free, so you’ve got nothing to lose but only gain a new media streaming experience.

Download AirPlayit here

5 iPhone apps that are perfect for viewing and editing documents on the go

Gadget News — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:36:37 +0000

The iPhone is the most popular smartphone, and is used not only for phone calls, sending texts and emails and Web browsing, but also for entertainment (it’s much better than a separate gaming console) and of course, for work, by a lot of people. If you need to do some office work and you don’t have time to do it at home, you should know that it’s entirely possible to do it on the move, right on your iPhone.

You’ll need the right apps, but fortunately there’s like two dozen of them plus countless copies on the iTunes marketplace. You can edit any kind of documents, even if they’re filled with graphics and have a hundred pages – that’s the beauty of a powerful smartphone, after all. Here are the best iPhone apps that you can use to edit documents on the go:

QuickOffice for iPhone. QuickOffice is practically the best app out there for the iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4 for document editing (the iPhone 4S has the even better iWork Suite to brag about). It is a full suite that includes apps for editing rich text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The app works very well, and it can be used for many different formats, including PDF (it can even edit PDFs, but only basic text editing, nothing more). If you need the best office suite for your iPhone, this is it.

Documents to Go. Documents to Go is an excellent competitor to QuickOffice and Apple’s own iWork Suite – it is practically the same suite as QuickOffice, only without support for PDF editing and with the added ability to edit documents right on Google Docs. If you need that functionality and you don’t need to edit PDF files, you might want to get this app instead of QuickOffice above, because it also uses fewer resources when running, and the overall performance is higher, even in long documents.

Pages. Pages is part of the new Apple iWork Suite for the iPhone 4S, and it cannot be used with the older iPhone 4 (or iPhone 3G and 3GS, of course). But if you have the iPhone 4S, this is the best app out there for editing documents. Apple really did a great job (as always) at making it work well on the small touch screen and the number of features it has exceeds the tools in both QuickOffice and Documents to Go.

Numbers. Numbers is the second app of the iWork suite, but of course it can be downloaded separately (in fact, the iWork suite’s 3 apps need to be downloaded separately for the iPhone and iPad, they come together only for Mac OS X). If you’ve seen the desktop version, then you can imagine how great the iPhone version is. It can create the same beautiful graphs, and you can save them on your phone, upload and share from iCloud and output them over HDMI to an external display.

Keynote. Keynote makes up the final part of the iWork suite, and it’s the presentation creation/editing tool for the iPhone 4S, straight from Apple. As such, you can expect it to work extremely well, with the integrated templates being great for almost any purpose, and you can easily output everything to a projector (in 1080p HD resolution, no less) using the iPhone 4S video out capabilities.

Just a few years ago, editing a document on the go using a smartphone was very, very hard, and if it had any kind of advanced formatting or was more than a dozen pages long, you could as well forget it and just use a laptop when you can. Nowadays, things have changed dramatically, and you can easily edit any kind of documents on your phone without problems. If you have an iPhone, be sure to check out the above apps – they’re the best in their class and I’m sure one of them will fit your needs perfectly.

5 cool iPhone 4 apps you have to check out today

Gadget News — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:05:40 +0000

Apple’s iPhone 4 is currently the world’s most popular smartphone. It has sold more units than the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS combined, and has beaten all the records for the most sales in 1 day, 1 week, 1 month and overall, which is pretty damn impressive. Its successor, the iPhone 4S, has already started production, and you can preorder it online – over 200,000 units have been preordered in the first day, and it looks like it will become another iSuccess, for sure.

Meanwhile, the iTunes marketplace has over 500,000 apps on it, and there are thousands of them to choose from in every category. Below you’ll find my selection of some of the best and coolest iPhone 4 apps that I’ve seen:

PlayStation One Emulator. If you grew up in the era of the first PlayStation, you may remember all the games you played fondly, and now you can relive the experience thanks to this emulator for the iPhone. It works pretty well, although the games are pretty darn big. The biggest disadvantage is the small screen and the need to jailbreak your device, so it’s definitely not for everyone.

Kindle. After trying to unsuccessfully battle the new iPad with their Kindle, Amazon finally gave up and released the Kindle app, hoping to at least retain users on their books marketplace if they could not sell them on a separate device for eBooks only. And it worked, mostly because Amazon has the largest collection and everyone is used to buying from them. The Kindle app for iPhone looks and works very well – you can order the books, store them for reading, and the reading experience is as pleasant as it can be on the relatively small display.

Dropbox. Dropbox is the new way of storing and syncing files, it seems. It is very easy to use – you just install the app and all the files that you put in a special folder are automatically uploaded to your online account and downloaded and stored on any other devices you own that are running Dropbox, as well. The basic version is free, but if you want extra space, you can always purchase a bigger plan – it’s very convenient. With iCloud (which is basically the same service) here, it may be a bit redundant, but if you have something that you absolutely must never lose and be able to access at any time, having both iCloud and Dropbox couldn’t hurt.

Dragon Dictation. The new iPhone 4S has Siri, a seemingly amazing virtual assistant that uses voice recognition to do a lot of tasks, from setting your alarm to writing and sending an email. That’s good news for those who have the 4S, but bad for those who own the iPhone 4 – the Siri app stopped working on October 15th, a pretty ugly move of Apple’s part. But if you liked dictating emails, documents and messages, you can always use Dragon Dictation, a great alternative that is also free – the speech recognition engine is very good, but alas, it lacks the voice control features of Siri.

Adobe Photoshop Express. Yes, this is Adobe’s photo editing product for the iPhone in your pocket! Photoshop Express is free, and it can do a lot of things for a mobile app – you can take a picture, crop or resize it, modify colors settings, add special effects and filters, and much more – all using your phone’s touch screen. It’s pretty impressive, so check it out when you get the chance!

There are many other great apps available for the iPhone, and if you want to see what your device is really capable of, all you have to do is perform a search online and of course, on the iTunes marketplace. But if you’re just starting out, check the above apps first – they won’t disappoint you!

5 apps to help you get the most out of your iPad

Gadget News — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 23:07:45 +0000

Both the first and second iPads are the most sold tablets in the world, which is pretty surprising since there are many other competing devices running on Android that are cheaper, faster and better looking, but I suppose nothing beats iOS in ease of use of use for complete beginners.

However, under that simple interface hides a pretty advanced operating system that is capable of a lot more than you probably think. The only way to take advantage of the advanced functionality is through apps, and fortunately, there are a lot of them on the market – over 500,000. Here are just some of the apps that can help you get the most out of an iPad (or iPhone, for that matter):

Kindle. The iPad is a perfect book reader – as a matter of fact, it was because of it that the sales for Amazon’s Kindle went down considerably at the beginning of 2010 – people saw that they can have an all-in-one device that can not only read books, but also surf the Web, play videos and music, edit documents and much more, so there’s no need to have a separate device for just eBooks. Fortunately for Amazon, their business model is based on selling the actual books rather than the Kindle readers, and with the official iOS app they actually gained more users. The app itself is very nice and gives you access to Amazon’s huge collection, which dwarfs Apple’s own iBooks e-store.

iWork Suite. Speaking of editing documents – the iPad does it pretty darn well on the 1 GHz processor and 9.7 inch display (double the former for the iPad 2), but of course, you need a good app to take full advantage of the hardware. Apple’s own iWork suite is perfect – it includes Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps for documents, spreadsheets/graphs/charts and presentations, respectively, and each one of them does the job much better than other apps on the market. If you need to open, view, create or edit documents on the go and even show presentations using a projector, iWork is a must have.

Air Display. When you’re not using your iPad, it kind of goes to waste just staying around like that. The developers of Air Display noticed that, too. The app allows you to use the iPad as a secondary display for your laptop or desktop computer – pretty useful when you need an extra productivity boost – for example, you can move your calendar, music player or browser window to the iPad’s screen while you work on your main display, which is very useful in my opinion and lets you fully use your iPad all the time.

SketchBook Pro. Sketchbook Pro is a very cool app for the iPad, which lets you sketch and paint anything right on the device’s touch screen. We’re not talking about a simple drawing app here, either – Sketchbook is made by Autodesk, which you might know as the creator of AutoCAD and other professional tools, and the app lets you do some pretty serious work – just search Google for what people made using it, it’s downright amazing. The app has everything you might need for editing, too, including layers, various brushes, presents, undo/redo, and pressure sensitivity that works pretty well.

Square. Square is the service that is set to revolutionize payments in the future, and their iPad app is only the beginning. What it does is basically allow you to receive, process and register cash payments using your iPad as a cashing machine – there’s an optional (well, actually it’s pretty much required nowadays) card reader that also lets you swipe and process credit card payments, as well. This is a pretty innovative way of receiving payments, and using an iPad + Square is much cheaper than the usual equipment a bank may provide. It truly shows just how much the iPad can do.

The iPad is a very good tablet, but of course, you can always get more out of the hardware with a few great apps. Be sure to check out the apps listed above – they can be pretty useful and will show you just how much more your iPad is capable of.

5 Mac OS X apps you should check out now

Gadget News — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:51:07 +0000

Mac OS X is practically the best operating system out there. It combines good looks with a very nice environment for developers and a lot of features for advanced users, while still allowing novice to learn the ins and outs very quickly. The third party apps are also some of the highest quality around – have you ever seen a bad Mac OS X app lately? With that in mind, here are just a few of the apps you should check out now if you have a Mac:

Quicksilver. Quicksilver is definitely one of those apps that can only be recommended as a “must have”. It allows you to work more effectively and be more productive on your Mac, by adding new functionality like the ability to launch an application, find any files, find text, manage multiple items in the clipboard, and more – all with a few keystrokes and mouse clicks. Even though a lot of its functionality has been replaced by Mac OS X own Spotlight, there’s still a lot of things that only Quicksilver can do right.

Dropbox. Dropbox is one of the most popular “cloud age” apps for Mac OS X, and it has gained quite a following in the past couple of years. The service lets you upload all the files you want to a secure online storage space, and also keep synced copies on any other device that has the client installed and configured (your iPhone or Android phone, Windows PC, etc.). This way, you can access your data anytime, anywhere from any computer, and easily share it with other people. Using Dropbox is just as easy as using a folder – just drag, drop and forget.

Soulver. This app is the missing link between Excel/Numbers and a calculator. It’s simpler than the former two, but slightly more complex than the former, giving you the ability to do quick calculations as well as perform any number crunching tasks that you might need. With Soulver, you don’t need to switch between a text editor and the calculator – the app has both, and you can use it to solve a simple math problem, as well as calculate the budget for your next project.

Growl. Growl is a great app for Mac OS X, which gives you a new way of receiving notifications from your favorite apps. The applications in question must support Growl, but that should be no problem, as most of the good apps out there already do. Growl lets you configure how and when the notifications will appear, and you have the ability to set them up for almost any task that the app does – a download has finished, you receive a popup, a file has been modified, you get notified – you’ll never miss a thing with Growl.

Scrivener. Scrivener is THE tool for anyone who needs to write an extensive article or a book. This app has everything you need to start a book from scratch and finish it without ever switching to another window. Not only does it give you a nice text editor, but you can also save different versions of the text, create notes, drafts, find and store sources, create an outline of your work, export in any format, and much more. It may seem complex at first, but once you get used to it, you won’t be able to live without it.

There are a lot of other great apps for Mac OS X on the official marketplace, as well as all around the Web, but before you go searching for other good stuff, be sure to check out the above five-o – you won’t be disappointed!

6 great WebOS apps you should check out now

Gadget News — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 22:15:48 +0000

WebOS has had a long history on the market, and it has actually been a leader for quite some time before Windows Mobile took over, but as you may know, it is virtually unknown today. When HP bought the OS from Palm, they had big plans for it, they planned to revive and use it to compete with Android, iOS and Windows 7 Phone.

Technically, WebOS is a very capable system, but HP severely underestimated the sheer amount of resources and time it would take to get it ready for such a big goal. And with the change in management and the big failure of the TouchPad, not to mention the Pre 3 and Veer smartphones, HP just decided to give up.

But what about all the people who already own devices running WebOS, including the first and second Pre that were released under the Palm brand? Well, even though the OS is abandoned, there are still quite a few apps on the market, and developers working on porting existing ones from other platforms, so I don’t think current owners should worry, at least not for the next couple of years. Here are just a few great apps that are available for WebOS and which you should check out when you have the time:

Super Contacts. The new WebOS default contact manager is disappointingly lacking a very important feature – categories. It only allows you to view all of your contacts in an alphabetical order list, which gets tiring when you’ve got hundreds of them. Super Contacts allows you to categorize you contacts however you want and assign custom gestures for a few useful things like sending an SMS or email. The free version has ads (like a lot of free WebOS apps do) and allows only allows 3 groups and only 12 contacts per group, which may be enough for some people, but those who don’t like ads and/or store a lot of contacts (like entrepreneurs and businessmen) might need to shell out $1.99 for the full version.

Evernote. This is an excellent tool to have for taking any kind of notes and storing any sort of information. You can save emails, notes and documents, web pages in catalogs and with tags that will help you find them later. The application can sync with your online Evernote account if you have one, which is very useful. The main difference between this WebOS app and its iPhone and Android counterparts is the lack of a voice recording feature, which is very useful when taking quick notes.

TweeFree. There are a lot of Twitter clients for Palm WebOS, but this one has the most features for a free application. TweeFree has a very nice interface and offers all the standard Twitter features – @ mentions, timeline, direct messages, search and favorites – which are more than enough for most users. There is a $2.99 upgrade that gives you a location-based “Nearby” stream and the ability to read and add to Twitter lists.

My Databank. My Databank allows you to create simple list databases using text fields, check boxes and numeric fields. The app comes with a few lists pre-installed and you can download more by selecting “Share Categories” from the drop-down menu. You can also copy and modify lists on the fly and send information to other apps on the device. In a real world example, you can use this app to make a list of email addresses, then send a message to all of them (your personal pocket mass mailer) or open a few web browser windows (or “cards”) with one click.

Outline Tracker. This is a very useful application for entrepreneurs or people who like to plan their tasks and keep their time in check. It uses the Getting Things Done system, which allows you to break a bigger project into smaller tasks and schedule them at specific times every day. The app also has the ability to sync with Basecamp, which makes it practically a must have if you use it. The free version is limited to 50 entries, which may be enough for personal or small business use, while the paid version is $23.50, quit a bit more than the other apps on this list.

Pandora. This application allows you to stream any Pandora stations onto your Palm device. As you may know, Pandora is a great music streaming service, where you create your own channels (or “stations”) with your own artists and can stream it anywhere, anytime and share it with anyone. The Android application has become very popular, and this WebOS version is also very nice. You can buy and download any songs very quickly using the “Buy this song” button, which leads to Amazon, and the controls are in the phone’s notification area, so you can access them anytime, even while using other apps.

AccuWeather. This is a great application to keep track of the weather around the world. The main page shows you the local temperature, wind speed and humidity (based on the ZIP code you entered or your GPS location). There are other pages for 24-hour forecasts, satellite view over your location and a list of prospects for planning any events (you wouldn’t want have an open barbeque or run in the rain . The free version is supported by ads, and there’s a $1.29 fee for removing them, but if you don’t check the weather every half an hour or so, chances are they won’t annoy you.

As you can see, there are a lot of apps for WebOS that can do whatever you need. If you already own a WebOS smartphone or the TouchPad tablet, do a search on the marketplace. Chances are you will find a solution for your problems.

7 great extensions for the Mac OS X Safari browser

Gadget News — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 22:11:15 +0000

Apple Mac OS X’s stability and functionality are practically the best on the market, and the user interface has yet to be beaten in ease of use and intuitiveness by any other platform. The apps designed for Mac OS X follow this great tradition and set new standards in usability and functionality every year.

Apple’s own web browser, Safari, has always been a great browser, especially for one that comes installed by default (I’m comparing it to the world famous bugger Internet Explorer , but recently its functionality began to lack support for advanced and more modern features like better ad blocking, security standards and extension capabilities.

When Firefox and Chrome have been released for Mac OS X, they began to get users on their side extremely quickly and Apple decided it was time to change things. So was Safari 5 born.

Safari 5 is an amazing modern browser, supporting every new piece of technology you can name, including HTML 5. But the biggest addition is the support for extensions. When Safari’s database of extensions will start numbering in the thousands, it will most certainly become a fierce competitor for Chrome and Firefox on Mac OS X.

For now, there aren’t that many Safari extensions, but the collection is growing every day and already includes quite a few great extensions that a lot of people will find useful. Below is a list of the best.

SaveTabs. This is an extremely useful extension that allows you to save all of your currently open tabs and reopen them later at any time you want. It’s surprising that web browser developers don’t integrate such things into browsers by default. Until now, you could only do it in Chrome and Firefox, but now you can also do it in Safari 5.

Mouse Gestures. Being that the Apple Magic Mouse is such an advanced and cool piece of technology, it would be a shame not to use it fully. This Safari extension allows the user to do exactly what its name implies: control various browser functions using mouse gestures. It’s pretty useful when you want to perform different actions quicker than usual.

BugMeNot. This extension will come in pretty handy when you need to view or download something from a site, but you don’t have the time or desire to register. It accesses the BugMeNot database of usernames and passwords to allow you quick access into hundreds and thousands of online forums, social networks and other sites.

Share with Facebook. This extension does what the name says: lets you share anything you find interesting on Facebook with the click of a button (that is always located in the toolbar). Useful if you like to share stuff you find online with your friends.

Safari140. Like the extension above, but for Twitter. You can post anything directly to your Twitter account (be careful not to accidentaly post something you don’t want to, though , and the extension also shortens long URLs for you using a 3rd party online service like bit.ly. Pretty handy.

View Style Sheets. View Style Sheets adds a new option in the drop down menu that lets you, well, view all the style sheets that the current page uses. Very useful for web developers and designers that want to take a quick look at how a site operates without starting their 3rd party tools.

User CSS. This is a great extension that lets you personalize the way any site renders in your Safari browser and appears on your screen. It basically lets you replace the site’s CSS files that are sent from the server with your custom ones that you save on your computer. Now you can have Twitter feeds on your Facebook main page or the latest RSS feeds on any site you like and frequently visit.

NoMoreiTunes. This nifty extension disables the script that runs iTunes every time you click on a link that leads to the iTunes store. I don’t know why Apple thought it would be a good idea to do that, but the fact is that it’s extremely annoying for many people. This extension will finally save you from that.

There are many more Safari extensions that you may find useful, just search for them in the database. Developers are also working on new extensions and porting the best ones from Firefox and Chrome, so if you like Safari you should be able to install your favorite extensions from those 2 browsers soon enough.