Software : Twitter Music gets new homepage with more charts and genre breakdowns |
- Twitter Music gets new homepage with more charts and genre breakdowns
- Roundup: 8 web apps that are better than their desktop equivalents
- In Depth: 10 fun apps for hacking your phone
| Twitter Music gets new homepage with more charts and genre breakdowns Posted:  The Twitter Music website has been given pretty large overhaul, which may make the site more appealing to some of its early detractors. The new Twitter Music site has added a raft of new chart categories, following criticism that it only served up mainstream artists and did not fulfil its intended purpose as a useful music discovery tool. Now, the site features an Emerging category, for the best new emerging music and Unearthed, which claims to find talent 'hidden in tweets'. Alongside the Superstars and Popular categories which continue to serve-up household names, there's also a Hunted category, which brings music popular in the blogosphere. Choose your genreBeyond the chart expansions, users can now jump straight into their favourite genres, to find the most listened to music to suit their particular tastes. The web version is live now and we can only assume that the changes will be coming to the mobile app sooner rather than later. Have you had a chance to have a play? Do the changes address the problems? Do you think Twitter Music is moving in the right direction now? Let us know in the comments section. |
| Roundup: 8 web apps that are better than their desktop equivalents Posted:  Just a few years ago, even hinting that a web app could compete with a desktop equivalent would be ludicrous. There's no comparison in processing power! The web is too prone to crashes and errors! What about privacy and security! For those who have jumped on the Chromebook bandwagon (there are now models by Google, Samsung, and HP), you know processing power is not a problem. Without the OS overhead, the web screams. Browsers like Firefox and Chrome are now incredibly stable. And encryption standards are robust enough on the web to make sure sensitive data doesn't get into the wrong hands. For those looking for web apps to replace a desktop version - especially if you've moved to a Chromebook - here are a few options to consider. (Note that you won't find a word processor, video editor, or photo editor in the mix. I'm not convinced there are web tools that compete with the desktop versions, but keep an eye out - that might change this year.) 1. Creately This web app beats Microsoft Visio hands down. The interface is easy to use - you drag diagrams, art and other objects over from the left into a main window. There are thousands of symbols and templates, compared to only a few dozen on Visio. Powerful features like the ability to do a Google search from within the app or to check a revision history on your new diagram are also leagues beyond Visio. Plus the app runs in any browser on any OS. 2. Google Music Google has managed to improve its music app, including a recent major update called All Access. (For a set fee per month, you can access any album a la Spotify.) The app is ready to take on Apple iTunes, which itself has suffered from an array of confusing interface design changes. In Google Music, you can patch into internet radio stations, rate your music as a categorization technique, and use Android apps on a tablet and phone. The best feature: when you amass a collection of music, you can expand your storage allotment quickly. 3. Mindjet Here's a web app that started life on the desktop, then moved online. The tool is like a place on the web to keep your thoughts in check. You can create 'visual frameworks' to help you see how a project should develop within a team or to design a web site map. The app also lets you store, edit, and share documents. There's even a task manager. The 'desktop-like' features that impressed me most: on files, there's a version control system to check docs in and check out. You can quickly filter on docs to see, say, only your uploaded videos. 4. Adobe FormsCentral Forms creation sounds about as fun as doing your taxes. On the web, an app like Adobe FormsCentral breathes life into the process. There are colorful templates for every conceivable form, from college applications to new user registration forms. As you'd expect, forms can be 'web-enabled' or printed - and saved as PDF, of course. The tools for custom forms are incredibly easy to use - you can insert lines, checkboxes, images, and even a signature field. The app also lets you manage your forms in one easily accessible cloud portal. 5. iMeet Just a few years ago, if you wanted to hold a videoconference, you had to use a desktop app like Skype or even go to a telepresence suite for the best quality. Usually, with the desktop video chat tools, there's some configuration involved, and sometimes a few glitches. With iMeet, you can connect to your webcam almost instantly. The persistent room lets you have chat sessions and share documents. But my favorite feature is how easy you can connect up with colleagues. Each person can tap in by video, chat, or phone line for groupthink sessions. 6. SmartSheet I mentioned how word processing apps on the web have a ways to go. I do use Google Docs, but I'd never create a 40-page report with graphics, charts, table of contents and rich media online - Microsoft Word is still the best option. Yet, for spreadsheets, the main goal is number-crunching. SmartSheet is one of the best tools I've seen for this. You can perform most of the typical Excel functions for calculations. But you can also add notes to cells for collaboration, insert attachments, see a change history, highlight cells, and keep all of your spreadsheets in one place, regardless of who is working on them. 7. ChartIQ Desktop apps like MarketSmith are helpful for visualizing how a stock has performed. On the web, you're typically limited to a basic tool like Google Finance. ChartIQ lets you zoom in on stock data to track corporate earnings with stock price activity. You can analyze data as well, including a crowd-sourced estimator and a Wall St. Consensus tool. As with most web apps that use HTML5, you can pull up ChartIQ on any phone or tablet as well. 8. ZenDesk Customer support apps that help sphone agents are usually tied to the desktop. After all, reps need to reliably access customer knowledge in a network database. In recent years, the desktop market has seen an influx of web newcomers like ZenDesk. The app also manages your call tickets and maintains a knowledge-base to help agents look up policies and process. But the ZenDesk web app has powerful automation features - escalating tickets, tracking success, generating reports, even filling in stock answers to speed up call processing. |
| In Depth: 10 fun apps for hacking your phone Posted:  Sure, you can keep your phone with the same wallpaper, icons, home screens and settings that it had when you first bought it - but where's the fun in that? A plethora of apps are available to enable you to get under the hood of your device and start making tweaks, and here we've collected ten of our favourites, from modding the notification lights and automating tasks, to revamping your home screen and managing files. Our round-up of tools is slightly weighted towards Android because it's a more 'hackable' platform and there are more tools available for changing different parts of the OS. If you're happy rooting your Android phone or jailbreaking your iPhone, then there are plenty of other apps and hacks you can consider, but we've restricted ourselves to tweaks and customisations that are possible without voiding your warranty. As ever, share your own recommendations in the comments. 1. Tasker Tasker lets you set up specific conditions (such as a time of day or a particular GPS location) and associate them with a related action (turning off Wi-Fi or muting your phone's sounds, for example). The app recently received an interface overhaul to bring it into line with the look of Android 4.0+, and you can also use it to create customised menus and pop-ups. It's not the easiest app to get to grips with, but it enables you to automate a whole host of functions on your Android device. 2. Launch Center Pro Unless you're going to jailbreak your iPhone, you're somewhat limited in terms of the tweaks you can make to the interface and iOS settings. Launch Center Pro is one of the apps that can make a real difference, enabling you to create 'quick links' (like desktop shortcuts) to other actions within apps. You can create a link to a specific option in Settings (such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), to the compose window for sending a specific friend a text, or to the 'take a photo' screen in Instagram, for example. 3. Advanced Task Killer Android tries to do its best when managing your multi-tasking apps, but if you want to take charge yourself then enlist the help of Advanced Task Killer. You can stop dozens of tasks with one calculated tap, add specific apps to an ignore list, automatically kill apps at certain intervals and free up memory for the tools you do want to use (some technical know-how is useful if you want to avoid closing system apps that you should keep running). Buy the £3.19 Pro version to remove the ads 4. Nova Launcher If you're running Android 4.0+ Ice Cream Sandwich on your phone, then you can take advantage of Nova Launcher, a tool that's able to customise almost every pixel of the mobile OS's interface. Change colours, icons, dock behaviour, widgets and more as you like. Upgrade to the £2.60 Prime version to get extra goodies such as unread counts and gesture control. It's one of the most comprehensive launcher tools on the market for Android, and you can back up and restore your customisations at any time should you need to. 5. Pimp Your Screen Combine wallpapers, app shelves, icon templates and lock screens to create a look for your iPhone that is truly unique. Pimp Your Screen has an impressive number of templates to pick from, and you can combine resources from within the app with your own artwork to tailor your iOS device's home screens to suit. There's a built-in preview feature so you can see the results of your customisations without exiting the app, and you can use the same settings across all of your iDevices if you wish to. 6. Light Flow Available as both a free and paid-for app for Android, Light Flow lets you take control over your notifications and specifically the notification lights on your device. Install the free Lite version first, to check compatibility with your phone - Light Flow requires root access on some models but not others. Once you're up and running, you can use the app to choose notification colours for certain apps and events, and even cycle through a series of colours if required. Vibration alerts and a special sleep mode can also be controlled by Light Flow. 7. App Icons Get hold of App Icons for your iDevice and you can switch between customised themes of icons, as well as build your own for specific apps or links to websites. You'll need to have the apps in question installed, and only certain apps are covered by the templates provided, but you can radically transform the look of your iOS device with just a few steps. If you don't want to have to shell out any cash straight away, you can pick up a free version of the app that contains ads. 8. Dropbox Dropbox works across computers, mobiles and tablets and has become much more than a file-syncing and back-up tool. So how does it help you hack your phone? It creates an intuitive, simple file system for your device, it enables you to easily install apps from outside of the official stores, it gives you more options when sharing and attaching files in other apps, and more besides. Whether you want to automatically back up your Photo Stream on iOS or install a beta app on Android, Dropbox can lend a hand. 9. Zedge Zedge comes packed with wallpapers, themes and ringtones you can apply on your Android or iOS device - it's all free to download and use, and new content is added on a regular basis. On iOS you'll find yourself limited to wallpapers for your home screen and lock screen, but the Android version extends this to cover audio features too, including notification sounds and other types of alert as well as calls and text messages. You can set wallpapers to automatically change based on a preset schedule too, if you wish. 10. Apex Launcher Another of the many app launchers available for Android, Apex Launcher is one of the most popular and well-respected in this particular bracket. As well as a customisable grid size across nine separate home screens, you can hide apps and on-screen elements (like the Google search bar), add animations and transition effects, and play around with the theme engine that covers icons and wallpapers. Upgrade to the £2.59 Pro version and you can access more advanced features (including unread count notifications) and additional gestures. |
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