However, this does not mean that Grooveshark is now free and in the clear. It’s still in plenty of hot water with its legal battles, so the actual library of songs available through the music streaming service may get more or less limited as time goes on. That said, at least the app is back and that helps Grooveshark maintain a certain level of mindshare among consumers.

“We’re delighted that the official Grooveshark app has been reinstated,” said Grooveshark in an official statement. “We look forward to continuing to build a relationship with Android and leverage this fantastic platform for our partners.”

This should build on the victory Grooveshark had in a New York court about two months ago. Universal argued that the safe harbor provisions in the DMCA didn’t apply to recordings before 1972. The judge disagreed and said that it wasn’t Grooveshark’s responsibility to determine the copyright status of pre-1972 recordings.

[Source via Google Play

]

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The core here is that you’ll still get all of the usual news, reviews and feature content that you’d get on the regular site, but it has all been optimized for a more mobile-friendly experience. They’ve also provided “quick access” to additional content by way of podcasts, videos and photo galleries. The guys at the Verge promise that “videos play just fine on both iOS and Android.” Commenting on posts works too. The “StoryStream” feature for following a story is intact, giving you a notification each time your subscribed story gets an update.

You can find the Verge app in the iTunes App Store and the Google Play Store for the iOS and Android versions, respectively. And yes, they are both free to download.

[Source]

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Actual reality can be confusing and overwhelming, and that’s why we oftentimes turn to the Internet for help. IBM is taking that to a new level with an AR mobile shopping app. The example given is when you’re cruising down the cereal aisle and you don’t know which one you want to buy.

When you take out your smartphone or tablet and launch the yet unnamed IBM shopping assistant app, it uses the camera to recognize the different products on the shelf. Then, the app will “instantly display recommendations and offers based on their specific preferences.” The demo here, for instance, shows that one of the cereals is “low in sugar” and that you get a half-gallon of milk for free when you buy this box of cereal.

The superimposed information that pops up in the app is hardly random either. It’s supposed to tap into your buying history, as well as looking at things like price, consumer rating, and environmentally friendly packaging. You can pre-set the characteristics that are important to you and then you can use the app to pan across a shelf of products. The app will then highlight the item that best matches your preferences.

“The idea of standing in an aisle in the supermarket and having your mobile device point out the gluten-free cookies you need can be a real time saver,” said project leader Amnon Ribak. “This has the potential to completely change the shopping experience from one of hunting, reading, and searching to simply picking up those products you prefer.”

I imagine the future of this could be integration with Google’s Project Glass.

[Source]

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The idea is quite simple. When there is a review posted in the Google Play Store for your app, you can click on through and give an inline reply. This helps to improve communication between developers and customers, of course, but it also helps to clarify any problems that these users might be having. This way, people who are downloading the app for the first time will understand how to overcome certain problems (that may not actually be problems in the first place). This helps to reduce your customer support costs too.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that this “reply” function is currently only available to those of you with a Top Developer Badge. After presumably ironing out any kinks in the system, the feature should be made available to all the other app developers in the audience.

[Source]

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It starts by installing the Phonedeck app on your Android smartphone;  they’re working on other platforms, one version for S40 has been developed. Then, you log into your account from the web browser on your computer and let everything sync up. The desktop side gives you full access to all your sent messages, call history, contact list, and more. And like Rogers One Number, you can send and receive text messages, as well as make phone calls, right from the browser… and they’ll look like they’re being initiated from your actual mobile phone.

The sync process can also include your Gmail, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts, ensuring that the contact information also remains up to date. I imagine that this requires a data connection from your phone to keep everything going, so you will need to be mindful of that consumption. An added feature are the “insights” that work almost like Google Analytics for your phone usage, showing the longest call, top contacts, average call, and other similar stats.

[Source via PhoneDeck]

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Coming from the same developers who created Kik, the Clik app works like this: load up the ClikThis.com on your smartphone, or scan the home page with your QR scanner app which will send you to iTunes for download.  Once the app is installed, load up ClikThis.com again on your desktop, the site will show one massive QR code. Scan that code using the Clik smartphone app and now you are linked.

The Clik app basically lets you search for YouTube videos, look at the trending videos, and so on. If you tap on a video, it’ll start playing in your computer’s browser. As I understand it, all the app is doing is telling the browser session which video to play based on the YouTube ID. That’s pretty restrictive in scope, but the SDK could theoretically be used for other web content too. It just needs to be coded.

I still don’t get why you’d want this, especially since it’s so much easier browsing for YouTube videos on a computer using the full site, but at least Clik is free and it might be a novelty thing for parties to make your smartphone into a sort of remote control DJ.

The post Remote Control Your PC YouTube Experience with Clik iPhone/Android App appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

I know what you’re thinking. This is going after much the same market as the Parrot AR Drone and that’s probably true, except these aren’t quadrocopters; they just have the two stacked rotors. There’s apparently three different versions of the RC helis, two of which come with onboard cameras for recording both stills and videos.

Sure it’ll work with the boxed IR remote, but the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch app seems well, more interesting. You’ll need the appropriate adapter though. There is also an app for Android that does the same. You can expect about eight minutes of airtime per charge. The i-FlyHeli is currently on sale for $45.99 from Sonic Electronix, down from the list price of $99.99. That includes free ground shipping to the lower 48 states.

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The main reason for the beta is to work out the kinks, but you need users to encounter those kinks for you to fix them. That’s why they’re encouraging more people to get the new Android app. To be fair, you don’t get the 5GB of cloud storage right from the get-go. Instead, you get 500MB on the first sync. After that, you need to automatically upload additional chunks of 500MB to grow your account in 500MB increments. Eventually, you hit five gigs.

That’s the first bit. The second bit is that the Android app itself comes along with a few upgrades too. For instance, you can set it up so that every photo you take with your smartphone will automatically get uploaded to your Dropbox account. This counters similar functionality I’ve seen with the Google+ app. You might want to keep an eye on your bandwidth, as it’s pretty easy to go over your monthly 3G/4G plan, but hopefully you can set it to Wi-Fi only too.

In any case, the app itself–as always–is free. You can grab the experimental beta in APK form at your leisure.

Soure: DropBox
Via: AndroidPolice

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For better or for worse, Google controls a fairly significant part of my online life. And I want access to that online life even when I’m not plugged into the matrix. And that’s why it’s good to hear that the Google Docs for Android app is now bringing offline access into the picture.

The newest update to the app, version 1.0.43, lets you view any file you have saved in your Google Docs account without having to be connected to the Internet in some form. Of course, you’ll need to define this offline access ahead of time and you’ll need to download the file locally before you disconnect from the net, but at least the feature is now there.

The other major change with the update is that when you view these Google Documents on your Android tablet, you will be presented with a “high resolution version of the document.” Rounding out the changelog include the ability to manage offline content, as well as the ability to star or rename files while offline. As always, you can find the app in Android Market as a free download.

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It looks like Siri now has a sister. A sister that is smarter, faster, and more resourceful. A sister that is more social too, playing friendly with both Android and iOS people. The sister’s name is Evi and this cross-platform voice assistant looks to be a serious challenger to Siri.

To be fair, there are other voice-based search assistants out there, but Evi by True Knowledge looks like it holds some seriously powerful potential. They say that the Evi app has “almost a billion facts,” as well as the ability to “infer trillions” from that. Evi also looks all around the web for you, gathering information from Google, GPS, Yelp, Wolfram Alpha, and more. There’s also the voting up and down of answers to help improve Evi’s effectiveness. Not surprisingly, Nuance is the tech behind the voice recognition.

Evi appears to have stronger logic and language reasoning too.

“If you ask “Who was President when Queen Elizabeth II was born?” Evi determines who Queen Elizabeth II is, when she was born and then compares this against which U.S. presidents were in office over that time, delivering the results of both serving U.S. presidents during those years. Siri cannot do this.”

And Evi can provide localized information for UK users, something that Siri still cannot do. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it looks like the True Knowledge servers have been overloaded by the flood of new users, so it doesn’t seem to be working. In any case, the iPhone version is available in the App Store for 99 cents, whereas the Android version is a free download.

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