“Hey buddy, you got some juice?” It’s some poor soul stopping you on a street corner with a look of desperation and the smell of regret. He plucks at your sleeve helplessly and then shows you a truly terrifying sight – a smartphone that’s completely and totally…dead. He pushes buttons, swipes the screen, shakes it, but NOTHING HAPPENS!
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For those of you from foreign climates (i.e. anywhere outside the M25 motorway in the UK) who may be considering heading to London for the Olympics 2012 this month, we have a little tool we feel you may want to consider downloading for your Android smartphone. It’s (possibly) guaranteed to help you save the day if you’re in a social situation near the Olympic Village and find yourself grasping for a conversational gambit or two.
Read MoreOne of the great things about an open development platform like Android is the free reign it gives independent developers to let rip with their skills and imagination. No sooner is a cool new feature announced from a major player like HTC or Samsung, than you’ll find coders across the world trying to deliver the same utility for other phone users on the platform.
Read MoreThere’s a bunch of live wallpaper apps out there for Android, which typically come with a variety of different features and formats. Some are little more than animated slide-shows, others deliver pitifully low resolution video or stutter badly in operation. But to date there’s been no real ‘practical’ video wallpaper product which didn’t suck up all your phone’s processing power or battery life.
Read MoreThe smartphone is starting to push traditional computing aside, simply because a handset is generally more convenient to use than a cumbersome laptop (and let’s not even mention desktop PCs, where are they now?). Of course you can’t do everything with a phone, but you can definitely handle most of the communication tasks, like email and instant messaging (WhatsApp = total awesome!), as well as things like location searching and simple information browsing. But there are times when it would be really useful…
Read MoreIf you’re one of those who are convinced that smartphone photos are destined to forever remain washed out, blurry, flash destroyed disasters, think again. The latest breed of high resolution phone cameras has spurred on a new generation of apps designed to take advantage of all that lovely power and glory. These �free apps promise to banish bad flash day and herald a new dawn of sophisticated DSLR functionality which almost – but not quite – could be mistaken for…
Read MoreRight now it’s no good just having yourself a television, it’s got to be a smart one. What that means, of course, varies from person to person. To your old Aunt Agatha it probably means it’s got a fancy remote control. To your geek mate, nothing less than a Dilythium powered 70 inch will do. But for the rest of us mere mortals, ‘smart’ tends to indicate an ability to connect to the Internet in some way.
Read MoreNever mind the hassles of fighting your way through department store sales day, you never know when things could get really rough. Like, eat or be eaten rough. And when that day comes you’re going to need a friend close by who can stop you doing stupid, and ensure that you have at least a fighting chance of surviving one night without peril.
Read MoreOne of the most powerful features of the Android operating system, which many people don’t know, is the fact that you’re not restricted to the user interface that your mobile provider embeds on your handset. Unlike certain other systems…cough…iOS…cough… Android gives you the flexibility to tweak and customise everything from the Home screen to the icons and beyond. Ultimately, of course, you can do away with the stock system and replace it completely with a new version of your choosing, like the…
Read MoreWhatever happened to remote teleworking? They promised us a life of leisure with no commuting, more time with the dog, less stress and all round roses and champagne. Well maybe I’m missing something, but the roads still look massively jammed up to me, and there’s no love and flowers flowing around the intersections as far as I can see.
Read MoreReally, when it comes right down to it, what’s the point in taking fancy vacations to exotic locations if you can’t share the experience with other people? In the ancient past we would sit our victims down in darkened rooms and bore them rigid with 4 hour photo slideshows, complete with droning commentary and obscure jokes that no-one understands.
Read MoreRather like using dynamite to fish in a lake, bargain hunting is becoming something of a killer sport, and the writhing creatures on the end of the line are the retailers, struggling to balance lower margins with increased price competition. Of course it’s technology that’s changing the odds in favor of the consumer, and a couple of new mobile apps are pointing the way to the future.
Read MoreOnline Flash games are nothing new, but on the whole they’re restricted to fairly basic features, just you against the clock or computer. Most of the big services also restrict you to their platform of choice, so you’re limited in when and where you can play, which can be frustrating if you really enjoy a particular game.
Read MoreThe smartphone camera has come a long long way since the launch of the Nokia 7650 in 2002, which is generally thought to be the first mass market camera phone in the world. Back in those days everyone was astonished at the quality of the photos the phone took, even if actually they were really rather awful. It was a PHONE for goodness sake! [Nokia 7650 image – Wikimedia]
Read MoreGoogle Currents, the tablet and smartphone formatted feed reader app has just gone international, and in celebration The Red Ferret is now published on the Google Currents platform. This means you lucky readers with the money to buy iPads and assorted tablet type toys (and smartphones) will be able to read us in magazine style, with a cool funky layout and everything. The only gripe we’ve got with the app is the fact that the titles aren’t live links, which means…
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