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Recently I wrote about some of the best ways to take, keep and share photographs with an Android smartphone. We looked at some physical aspects, like how to hold the phone, and how to zoom. This week, we're looking at some of the tweaks you can make to squeeze out the best shots. First, build an ars...

Price-matching, product reviews, historical pricing data and automating the coupon process are all superb uses for apps in the desktop browser environment. This week's All Things Appy takes a look at the five must-have, free apps that complement online shopping. Our No. 1 choice, Amazon Price Track...

Here's a novel way to find out if you do indeed need a new phone. It's a benchmarking app that will test components and provide a comparison with crowdsourced benchmarks from other common devices out there. If your 2-year-old, or so, phone or tablet seems a bit sluggish compared with the speed at wh...

Here's a novel way to find out if you do indeed need a new phone. It's a benchmarking app that will test components and provide a comparison with crowdsourced benchmarks from other common devices out there. If your 2-year-old, or so, phone or tablet seems a bit sluggish compared with the speed at wh...

You know all those free programs that typically come on PCs and mobile devices whether you want them or not? Common examples include paid antivirus programs within the PC environment and phone company add-ons like music stores within Android. Often called "bloatware," they are usually manufacturer- ...

Do you remember the scene in an early Star Wars movie where R2-D2 and Chewbacca played a holographically generated, Jedi 3D board game while killing time in their light freighter? Full-color, three-dimensional game pieces were projected onto the board. Chewbacca wasn't a particularly good loser, and...

The touchscreens prevalent on vast numbers of laptops awaiting your hard-earned dollars in consumer electronics stores accommodate highly suitable new tools for creating art. The tactile nature of the screen, as opposed to the awkward mouse, makes sweeping strokes and other gestures a lot easier. Th...

I recently took a look at MeteoEarth, a rather spectacular Google Earth-like animated weather app. This visual, 3D globe-spinning weather app for Android provides zoom-in weather visualizations of the kind seen on television -- and indeed, the publisher is a provider of weather-in-motion graphics to...

Early upgrade plans are tips of the hat to phone-as-fashion-statement. Who wants a graying two-year-old phone? Such plans do come at a cost, however. What if you don't actually need a new phone and the innards and battery are still good? If you're not a hard-core phone geek, aren't they all just abo...

The Multipath Router -- a project seeking crowdfunding on Indiegogo -- could change the way we connect to the Internet. Remember when Internet service was delivered to the home and workplace through copper voice phone lines terminating in a squeaking analog modem? Speeds using that clunky old system...

It's not all photo apps and more apps when it comes to taking photographs with an Android smartphone -- there are some basics that you need to know, unique to smartphones, that have nothing to do with imaging apps. If you're finding that you're migrating from a dedicated digital camera and taking mo...

This week's All Things Appy takes a look at the five best, free geo-oriented apps for the iOS platform. To keep your costs down, we're concentrating on those tracking apps that don't require additional hardware, like sensors. Not all mobile Apple hardware products have GPS satellite location, which ...

If you've ever been involved with any kind of work-related group project, you'll know what a nightmare it is to collaborate via email. The management of file versions alone is enough to introduce ambiguity and quickly hiccup the whole thing. Plus, if you're not careful, it's possible to start an ent...

If you've been stung by roaming charges in the past when using a U.S. cellphone abroad and you've recently heard about new, supposedly fair roaming caps in Europe, beware: It's not what it seems. As of July 2013, European-carrier SIM card roaming rates are capped in Europe at 0.45 euros, or about $0...

For a glimpse at the future of gaming control, there are few places better to look than iMotion. Intellect Motion's concept is to create a large, motion-sensitive area in front of you while you're gaming -- a kind of invisible, virtual touchscreen. Handheld controllers then interact with that touc...

Battery managers, task killers, analyzers and monitoring apps make up the basis of a solid Android mobile tool kit. This week's All Things Appy takes a look at the must-have, free apps in this genre that will keep your device operating swimmingly. First up? ReChild's Advanced Task Killer app, which...

You know those fancy, animated weather visualizations that you get on the local television news broadcasts -- the ones with the 3D drill-down dynamic graphics that make it appear as if the meteorologist is directing the clouds? Well, you can now get something similar on your Android device. MeteoGro...

With a 3 GB bucket of wireless data from your cellphone company often costing more than $50, it makes sense to take advantage of the often unlimited or at least generous nature of a cheap, wired home Internet connection when you can. Netflix reckons that its movie and TV streaming service, using its...

If you've ever used Microsoft's Kinect motion-sensing input device for the Xbox 360 game console, you'll have an initial grasp of how Occipital's 3D scanner for mobile devices, called "Structure Sensor," functions. Whereas game add-on Kinect is a sensor for detecting and interpreting movement, new K...

Fall is just around the corner in the Northern Hemisphere, and at least for those of us in some locales, outdoor activities can now ramp up with the milder temperatures. This week's All Things Appy takes a look at the top five free Chrome apps in the weather department. First up? Full Screen Weathe...