There are plenty of ways to get television content on your smartphone or tablet, but T-Mobile figures two more options shouldn’t hurt. Today T-Mobile announced two new subscription content packages for its T-Mobile TV service. Interested customers will be able to subscribe to Playground TV or Urban Zone for $4.99 a month, or $5.99 a month for their HD counterparts. Playground TV caters to younger audiences by offering programs such as Dora the Explorer, Veggie Tales. Curious George and Sesame Street. Urban Zone provides content for older audiences from BET, Crackle TV, Classic Media and Comedy Time. Both packages provide access to live and on-demand content. Read [Tmo News]  
While many in the US market have come to take the availability of the Kindle Touch for granted, it looks like those in Europe are just now able to place an order. Yup, Amazon has officially begun selling the Kindle Touch and the Kindle Touch 3G in Europe. Though, while the ereaders are currently available for sale, they will not begin shipping for a short while — until April 27th. That said, the Kindle Touch will be available for those in the UK as well as France, Germany, Italy and Spain by way of the country specific Amazon stores. Via [Yahoo! Finance]  
Opera Software has officially announced and released the latest in terms of Opera Mini for Android. The newest version of Opera Mini has come available for Android and has arrived as version 7.0 and by way of the Android Market Google Play. This latest build of the browser comes with some additions and some improvements which break down as follows;
Additions: - OpenGLES hardware acceleration
- RTL text support in UI (Arabic, Hebrew)
- Beam support (NFC on Android 4.x)
- Exit button
Improvements: - Speed Dial start page
- Tab management
- Find-in-page UI
Otherwise, Opera Mini is both free to download and free to use and brings some other great features such as Speed Dial and Tabs as well as a good overall reading experience thanks to page sizes, address bars and toolbars that automatically adjust. Also worth noting, Opera Mini is a good option to consider if you are looking to keep your data usage in check. According to the folks at Opera Software, you can reduce data costs by up to 90 percent with their “unique compression technology.” Via [Google Play]       
Some big numbers for a big smartphone, Samsung has announced that they have shipped five million units since the handset was launched. And as a coincidence in numbers, those five million were shipped in five months time. Simply put, Samsung managed to ship five million of the Galaxy Note smartphones (a device with a 5.3 inch display) in only five months. That being said, while five million is certainly a nice milestone, we have to think that those who purchased one of the phablets would much rather here that the Ice Cream Sandwich update was available. Instead, Samsung is bragging milestones and users are still waiting for the Android 4.0 Premium Suite update to arrive. Via [Engadget]  
It has been a few months since we saw Amazon roll-out a software update for the Kindle Fire. The last arrived as version 6.2.2 back in mid-January. But that aside, it looks like software version 6.3 for the Kindle Fire has begun to roll-out. And as nice with the Kindle Fire, users can simply sit back and wait for the update to do its thing. Of for those who here the term update and want it now — you can grab your device, tap the Quick Settings icon and then hit Sync to get things going. Aside from actually getting the update, version 6.3 appears to be a few worthwhile goodies including movie rentals, sharing, book extras and more. Breaking each of those (and the more) down a bit further, we have the changelog from Amazon; - Sharing: Customers will be able to easily share favorite passages and notes from their books directly from Kindle Fire, without even leaving the book. Customers simply highlight a passage and select “Share” or choose the “Share” option from the toolbar within a book, write a note if they choose, and select which social network to share with. Passages or notes a customer chooses to share will be displayed to other Kindle readers viewing the same book, and customers can also choose to share via Facebook and Twitter. Amazon already has a vibrant community of readers who choose to share favorite passages and notes from their reading through Kindle.amazon.com. This update brings these notes and highlights to Kindle Fire, so a reader can easily see what other readers are saying about their books.
- Book Extras: Powered by Shelfari, Amazon’s community of book lovers, Book Extras make it easy for customers to see supplemental material about the book they are reading, without even leaving the book. Customers can view descriptions of characters, a glossary of common terms used in the book, information on the authors and common locations referenced in the book, and more. To view Book Extras from within a book, customers simply tap the top of the screen to bring up the toolbar, tap the menu button and select “Book Extras.”
- Archive of Personal Documents: Customers’ personal documents will be stored in the Amazon Cloud and available for re-download at any time from the Documents tab on Kindle Fire. Just as with Kindle books, Whispersync will automatically sync notes, highlights and last page read for personal documents.
- Print Replica Textbooks: Students can buy thousands of print replica textbooks to read on their Kindle Fire and save up to 60% off the list price of the print textbook. Print replica textbooks maintain the rich formatting, color and layout of the print editions, with features including notes and highlights, zoom and pan, linked table of contents, real page numbers and whispersync of notes, highlights and last page read.
- Reading View for Amazon Silk: There is a seemingly endless array of interesting and engaging content available on the Internet. Sometimes, unfortunately, that business article, blog post, or sports recap you clicked on is surrounded by a host of competing material. With Reading View on Silk, the content that you’re interested in is elevated above the clutter. When invoked by the customer, Silk will load the body of the page in a reading-optimized, single screen view (even for multi-page articles). The full page is still available in the background, allowing the reader to easily toggle back to a traditional view to see other interesting features on the page.
- Movie Rentals: The rental period for movie rentals that are downloaded to Kindle Fire now starts when a customer starts watching the movie, rather than when a customer starts downloading the movie.
- Additional Enhancements: This update will also bring some of the features customers have requested, including faster re-connect of Wi-Fi after Kindle Fire has been asleep, and general performance enhancements.
Via [Amazon] and [Liliputing]  
The Android Evernote has recently gotten some updates and it looks like this is one that those who are into widgets will appreciate. In addition, the app is now also sporting support for speech-to-text. Beginning first with the improvements to the Evernote widgets, this now comes as a separate app from the main Evernote for Android app. The app is dubbed Evernote Widget and can be found in Google Play by clicking this link. The Evernote Widget app will run on Android 1.6 or later, is free of charge and currently sitting at version 2.0. Simply put, Evernote Widget will allow you to do just what one would expect — set your Evernote widgets. According to the details provided, using this app will give either a small or large widget. - Small widget: Create new text, snapshot and audio notes, and jump to the search screen.
- Large widget: Same as the small widget, plus snippets of recently viewed notes.
Otherwise, the Evernote widgets can also be customized for things such as color, buttons, which notebooks or tags appear and include quick snapshot functionalities. And lastly on the Evernote Widget app, in order to use this you will need the latest version of the regular Evernote app installed, which happens to be version 3.6. Next up, the update for the regular Evernote app. This update brings speech-to-text, which works by way of Google Android’s text transcription. Bottom line here, tap the speech-to-text icon and get to talking. A few items worth noting on the speech-to-text, this one works only with Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich and you will need an active net connection. Lastly, there was also the mention of “lots of under-the-hood bug fixes and stability improvements” as well as a promise of more “great new features coming soon.” Via [Evernote Blog] 
 
Just a quick note for those of you who just got the new iPad and have been using the iPad video aggregation app called Frequency. Said iPad app has just been updated, specifically to make it work flawlessly for the retina display of the new iPad. This means that you’ll enjoy videos from Frequency’s huge collection. And for those who have not used this app before, now is the right time to do so. Frequency for iPad lets you create personalized and portable video experience by following your favorite video channels. These channels include those from big media brands as well as independent video producers. The app also lets you connect and share your favorite videos on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. You can also tell Frequency of subjects that you’re interested in and the app will create a specialized video channel for you. Other new features of the updated app include – completely rebuilt interface making full use of the retina display of the new iPad, full 1080p video playback from video sources and over AirPlay, and more than 1,00 video channels. Frequency for iPad is available as a free download from the iTunes App Store. Via [iTunes App Store]  
We seem to be hearing quite a bit about Instagram lately, which honestly makes this guy smile. But that bit aside, the Android app appears like it will be coming available sooner rather than later and on the iOS side of the fence — we are beginning to see Instagram support rolled into other apps. Of course, we had the news of Instagram and Hipstamatic last week. And well, coming this week is Instagram support on another iOS camera app. The latest is Camera Awesome from SmugMug. The Camera Awesome app has an updated version (1.0.3) available by way of the iOS App Store and in addition to the Instagram integration, you will also find goodies to include; - Much lower pricing for effects packages
- In-app tutorials
- Pinch-to-zoom
- White balance lock
- Improved sharing interface
- Improved shot timer
- Performance improvements
- EXIF date improvements
- Bug & crash fixes
Via [iOS App Store]  More Recent Articles | |
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