Category Archives: Apps

5 Android Apps to Help Monitor Your Home

With the boom of Smartphone ownership in recent years, there has been an increasing number of home security systems that have joined forces with the app and Smartphone world to allow people to control their home’s safety from anywhere, at any time. People want to make sure that their homes are as secure as possible whether they are in or out, so installing alarms from companies like Verisure and having them connect to their smartphones is a huge plus.

If you think about it, this makes a tremendous amount of sense. What better way to monitor a security system or camera than via your Smartphone? read more

Tablet Development Overview

Many people think of tablets as large smartphones, but the difference is much bigger if you talk to an app developer. While the larger screen is definitely something to contend with, there are other hardware components and layout issues to consider when developing an app for a tablet. These are the major differences that you should consider when making anything for the tablet platform.

Screen Size

Most smartphones have a 4-inch display while tablets have a 7-inch or 10-inch display. This might seem like a small difference, but it’s not. The app developer must enlarge the app to fit the tablet’s screen without distortions. While the app can stretch by itself without any tweaking, this will usually lead to problems such as blurry graphics and slow loading times. read more

Try Paid Apps on Android Before Buying Them

The Android Operating system is the most widely used smartphone operating system in the world. It is a successful platform due to the open source apps and software you can run on this platform. So rather than discussing the merits of the Android platform, let’s get to the topic and sole purpose of this post. There are many apps in the Google Play store that you need to pay for. Often times, people end up buying them and after buying they realize that it wasn’t worth the price. So, in this post, I will show you a trick to try the premium and paid apps before actually buying them. After trying the apps, you can decide if it is worth the buy or not. So let’s start. read more

Install Apps From Another Country’s iTunes Store

Have you ever wanted to install an App from the iTunes store but you couldn’t because it was available in your country? If so, this tip is for you. There are many good apps on the store that are not available for the use of international users.  For example, if you live outside United States, you will not be able to install Apple iBook apps on your iPhone or iPad. Also, you cannot download Google Earth, as these apps are only made available to the iTunes store in US. Both of these are free apps, but still, it is sad that you cannot install and download these apps from iTunes as they are linked to a country other than yours. To add insult to injury, you will probably see these apps in your store, but won’t be able to download them, due to the reasons mentioned above. read more

Snapchat, Facebook Poke Videos, Etc are no Substitute for a Secure Messaging System

Many people have been getting into Snapchat, and to a lesser extent Facebook Poke recently. If you are unfamiliar we these apps, they simply give you a way to share a photo or video with someone else. However, the big appeal is that the picture or video disappears after 10 seconds. Recently, tests by the popular site Buzzfeed found that they were able to dig up some of these old videos by connecting their iPhone to a computer. Snapchat acknowledged the bug and said they will get a fix out as soon as possible. Facebook also acknowledged the issue, but did not state they would come up with a fix. Even after these bugs are fixed, I am sure someone else will be able to find another way around the 10 second limit at some point. Also, you never know how Snapchat and Facebook are storing these photos/videos on their end. It is quite possible they are all sitting in a database somewhere which opens up another possible set of issues. read more