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Droid Scan Pro's an Amateur at Character Recognition February 10, 2012 
Has anyone else noticed that you rarely receive a copy of hotel room-service receipts? Why is that? It hadn't really bothered me that much over the years -- despite a niggling feeling it should -- until an incident recently where the dollar amount I had signed for clearly didn't match the checkout bill. In this case, the hotel had added a service charge after I'd signed -- and after I'd added a tip to the receipt.
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Radio Tray: Tiny Web Radio Player Is Handy but Picks Up Some Static February 08, 2012 
If you spend a lot of time at your keyboard, no doubt you dabble a lot in listening to Internet radio. Radio Tray is a relatively new Linux app that can make tuning in to your favorite radio stations a new experience. Radio Tray is a streaming player for online radio that sits on the Linux desktop panel. Think of this app as a shortcut that hides the browser interface.
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Avid Studio: Thumbs Up on Interface, Sideways on Features, Down on Sound Effects February 07, 2012 
Back when Apple promised editing features built into the iPhone 3GS (the first iPhone to have a video camera), I wondered how a video-editing program could possibly fit into a phone. It wasn't just a question of available processing power, though that was part of it. It was also a question of screen size.
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'Inside the World of Dinosaurs' Feeds the Dino Lover in All of Us February 06, 2012 
As near as I can tell, almost every kid goes through an intense dinosaur phase, and for some adults, the fascination remains for decades. Even years after the movie "Jurassic Park" brought dinos to life, I would still eat up all the dinosaur documentary shows I could find, like "Walking With Dinosaurs."
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SMPlayer: A Flexible, Feature-Filled Media Player With a Frustrating Flaw February 01, 2012 
When it comes to playing audio and video files in Linux, media players pretty much all work the same way and have a very similar user interface. It usually all comes down to features. With SMPlayer it depends on what you want to play. Unfortunately, this bug of sorts is something its developer Ricardo Villalba has yet to resolve in the latest release, version 0.7.0.
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Yoink: Efficient Swatch Snatcher Makes Full-Screen Feel Less Bloated January 31, 2012 
Of all the changes brought about with OS X Lion, full-screen viewing was one that failed to make much of an impression on me, at least at first. Ballooning a window to the edges of the screen and blowing out the menu bar seemed a little restrictive at first. Full-screening an app the way OS X does it just felt uncomfortable and weird.
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Apple's Textbooks Improve Everything but the Text January 30, 2012 
After Apple announced that it had "reinvented" textbooks at its education media event in New York earlier in the month, I knew I had to take one for a spin myself. I downloaded the new iBooks 2 iPad app and launched it to get to the refreshed iBooks Store. I tapped the big "Introducing Textbooks" graphic and started looking.
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Vignette Lets Android Photogs Get Their Art On January 27, 2012 
Vignette differentiates itself from other Android-based camera apps by adding cross-process, tilt-shift, double exposure and other sophisticated effects like infrared, as opposed to the general toy camera and retro effects commonly found. The paid version of Vignette adds full resolution to the mix.
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Fotowall Has a Sharp Eye for Sweet Collages January 25, 2012 
Eye candy can be a great user experience sweetener, but tastes vary widely as to how much is just enough, and it's one differentiator among Linux desktops. Fotowall is a handy app that can spice up your desktop as well as create personalized print and wallpaper displays. Fotowall is a really clever collage-making tool of sorts.
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Numberlys: A Top-Shelf App for Kids, Though a Bit Overhyped January 23, 2012 
I must admit, I felt a bit duped by the description of the Numberlys app after I bought, downloaded and launched the app. I was expecting something bigger and longer that would appeal more to adults. Something gorgeous, imaginative, and slightly dystopian with an uplifting ending. What I got was something gorgeous, imaginative, and slightly dystopian with an uplifting ending. Just not something huge.
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LiVES: A Rich Video Editor With Layer Upon Layer of Features January 18, 2012 
LiVES is an advanced video editor that can double as a video jockey tool. It is surprisingly powerful. But its interface makes it rather simple to learn. In fact, it has so many feature levels that this app would be right at home as the video editor of choice in any professional film editing studio.
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Galaxy Nexus: A Dazzling Phone With an Enormous Appetite January 17, 2012 
OK, Greenpeace, arrest me now as an eco-criminal. I must have single-handedly deforested a good tract of the Amazon rain forest over the last few days. In mitigation, I plead that this was because of the requirements of my job. I was testing the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The device is sleek and sexy, has a great UI and nice features, but its appetite for power is incredible.
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Snapseed for Mac OS X Makes Your Photos Pop January 16, 2012 
The app that won Apple's coveted iPad App of the Year award, Snapseed by Nik Software, has made it to the Mac App Store and therefore, Mac OS X. Not only is this cool for photography-loving Mac users, it's cool because it brings some awesome filter and editing effects to the masses.
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Quickoffice Pro: Strong Cloud Connections, Dreary Look January 13, 2012 
Many Android devices ship with stripped-down office suite apps that offer limited functionality loosely based on the kind you'd get with Microsoft Office on your desktop. Having had a discussion recently with someone who now regularly travels without a laptop, depending solely on his Apple iPad for office functions, I was keen to see just how far these Office-like tools could go.
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Music Management Takes Flight With Songbird January 11, 2012 
Asking a seasoned Linux user what music player you should use is akin to bringing up questions about religion or politics with your drinking buddies. A much safer strategy is, don't ask and don't tell. But if you insist, let me throw a suggestion into the fray. Uncage Songbird. You might be pleasantly surprised at the melodious results.
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Google Translate's No Babel Fish, but It's Cheaper Than a Personal Interpreter January 10, 2012 
Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide book series solved the problem of interplanetary language barriers with a Babel fish -- a little telepathic alien leech-like animal you stick in your ear that instantly translates any spoken language via pure brain waves. In the real world, about the closest we can get to that are online tools like Google Translate.
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