I have absolutely no musical training or background. Give me an instrument, and I’m hopeless. But give me a simple sequencer, and I can make some music. Sequencers are brilliant because they abstract away much of the “hard stuff”: You don’t have to keep a beat, because the sequencer does it for you. You don’t have to try and pick notes that go well together, because they all go well together. And Rolling Tones for Android is a great one: It’ll have you making music before you know it.

What’d you have for breakfast this morning? How about two weeks ago? And hey, remember that time you and your friends went to that really fancy Japanese restaurant? If you’re a bit fuzzy on the last two questions (or even on the first), Evernote Food is a great way to answer them. I covered Evernote Food for Android before, when all it could do was log your meals. Now it’s time to give it another look, thanks to an all-new version that adds fun ways to track down new recipes and restaurants, as well as a fresh new look.

Just as shorting a computer out will ruin it, making it run in temperatures it was never meant to take will cause it to malfunction. SpeedFan is a free utility for Windows designed to help you keep a close eye on just how hot your computer is getting, down to the individual component level.

So, the brand-new Galaxy S4 has just started retailing! And as most early adopters, one of the first things I wanted to do with my new Galaxy S4 was of course to root it. This post shows exactly how I’ve done it. The root exploit I used was released by XDA developer cofface. It is not a foolproof procedure, and it does involve some trial and error. The exploit itself offers two rooting methods, only one of which actually worked for me. So, caveat emptor! The good news is that I did end up with a rooted phone, and so can you.

Cloud-based file sync services are easy to use and work well, but your privacy may or may not be your first priority. Not to mention the fact that these services always come with a storage quota, which you can work to maximize maximize, but a quota is a quota. If you’re longing for an alternative, you should check out BitTorrent Sync.

Most Android launchers are relatively similar: Nova, Apex, and friends usually offer what you’d expect: One or more homescreens with some third-party widgets, an app drawer, and app folders. And then there’s Chameleon: A bold rethinking of the launcher — not quite on the order of Facebook Home, but definitely distinguishable from most other launchers. Being different doesn’t mean it’s necessarily better, but it does merit a close look, especially given its slick aesthetics.

Keeping a personal journal can often help us make sense of the difficult times in our lives, or better remember the good times. If you’re carrying around a smartphone, you already have a powerful and compact device at your disposal, just waiting for your thoughts. And there’s an app for that: Diaro. This polished app/website personal journal combo is not perfect, but has a lot going for it.

Wallpapers are fun, and they’re also one of the best ways to customize and personalize your tech. Today I’m here with an app we haven’t looked at yet: Wallbase, the mobile companion for the venerable wallpaper website (which we did cover previously). While the app is mobile and well-suited for phone use, the wallpapers are not phone-specific: It draws its selection from the endless well of desktop wallpapers on Wallbase, and the picking and cropping are up to you.

When the Google Nexus 4 first came out, one of the nicest new features it introduced was Photo Spheres. These are immersive 360-degree panoramas you can take with the phone’s camera app, no extra gear needed. In the hands of a skilled photographer they create views that are the next best thing to actually being there. If you’re looking for a service that’s all about Photo Spheres, without any of that pesky “friending”, “circling” and commenting that go on in a social network, look no further than SphereShare.net.

What’s a safe way to find new websites you’re going to like? Based on websites you already like, of course. That’s what SimilarSites for Firefox does, and apparently it does it well enough to be featured on our list of Best Firefox Addons. But I’m here to take a closer look and see just how it performs in real life. To test it out, I am going to try it out on a number of websites I like and see if it comes up with interesting results.

One of Android’s greatest strength is how customizable it is. Even without rooting your device or installing a custom ROM, you can do some incredible things to shape your phone to be just the way you want it. Installing a third-party launcher like Nova goes a long way, but you can do so much more: UCCW, or Ultimate Custom Widget, is a widget that lets you place custom clocks, battery meters, weather meters, and just about anything else right on your homescreen. Customization is often a painful process, but UCCW makes it incredibly simple.

A text editor should not get in your face. The more you notice it, the worse it is. The best ones are nearly invisible, staying out of the way and letting you become one with your prose. For an application as simple as Notepad, that’s easy. But it becomes a trickier proposition if you’re trying for this level of simplicity while still offering advanced features like Dropbox sync and instant Markdown preview. LightPaper is a $2 text editor for Android that rises to the challenge.

When you stop and think about it for a moment, what the address bar does most of the time is… nothing. I mean, it just sits there, displaying the current tab’s URL in the plainest, most utilitarian way possible. Is there some way to make the address bar useful even when you’re not typing stuff into it? Location Bar Enhancer for Firefox is an addon that tries to do just that.

There is something to be said, however, for a professional “recipe book” approach, where content comes from a single trusted source that’s accountable for each recipe. That’s what you get with Must-Have Recipes, an Android app by Better Homes and Gardens featuring a professionally curated collection of recipes with a gorgeous studio-quality image of each recipe.

There’s a reason the new Chromebook Pixel, an expensive high-end machine, uses a 3:4 aspect ratio rather than widescreen 16:9. It’s because the Web is vertical. Webpages scroll up and down, but most of us have widescreen machine these days. As a result, most websites have generously proportioned margins – basically, just wide swaths of blank background, showing nothing. Sometimes that’s nice, but sometimes you might want to use all of those pixels more productively.