Write & Preview Markdown In Style With LightPaper [Android]
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.
Location Bar Enhancer Makes Firefox's Address Bar More Useful And Easier To Understand
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.
Tile Tabs for Firefox: Letting You Use The Full Potential Of Your Wide Screen
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.
Quantro - The Best Tetris Alternative For Android
I can't remember the last time I wrote an entire MakeUseOf post about a single game. But here I am, dedicating this whole post to tell you about just one game, because it's that good: Quantro for Android. You won't find mention of it on the Quantro page, but it's a Tetris clone. It's not just a dumb clone, though - it's even better than the original. They can't tell you it's Tetris, supposedly because of copyright issues, so here I am to lay down the truth.
What I MakeUseOf - Jonathan Smiley, ZURB Partner & Design Lead
Tools are awesome – if you read MakeUseOf, you probably agree. But the latest isn’t always the greatest. Rather, the greatest is whatever helps you get the job done, saves time, and just plain works. One good way to find those excellent tools is to see what an actual person uses in their daily life to get stuff done. Read on to see what Jonathan Smiley, a partner and a design lead at ZURB uses to get things done.
Adobe Photoshop Express for Android: It's Free, But Is It Any Good?
Photoshop is not just a strong brand. In the world of photo manipulation, it's pretty much the only brand. When your product's name becomes a verb ("photoshopping" images), that says something. But there's a reason it's such a strong brand - on the desktop, it is very, very good. So naturally, when looking to review the free Android version of Photoshop called Photoshop Express, I was expecting to be wowed by something at least as awesome as Snapseed.
What I MakeUseOf: Greg Wiens, Creative Director At Corel
Tools are awesome – if you read MakeUseOf, you probably agree. But the latest isn’t always the greatest – rather, the greatest is whatever helps you get the job done, saves time, and just plain works. One good way to find those excellent tools is to see what an actual person uses in their daily life to get stuff done. Read on for a detailed review showing how Corel's Creative Director gets work done.
No More Space On Your SD Card? Try Clean Master For Some Quick Relief
Even with a capacious 16GB SD card, I sometimes find myself running out of space on my Android phone. That usually happens due to my penchant for backing up – I have lots of Titanium Backup archives taking up space on my device, not to mention two or three ROM images (also known as "nandroid backups") at any given time. Throw in the occasional 1080p video taken with the device, and things can get awfully crowded in a hurry.
Write, And Let The World Revise Your Work With Prose.io For GitHub
Traditionally, writing is a solitary affair. It's just you and the screen, or a piece of paper. Man versus text in a battle of wills, wits, and emotion, until suddenly – you're done. Now it's time to show the world, to put your text out there and watch what happens. But in these digital times, that's not the only way to go about writing.
Feedbin: A Google Reader Replacement That May Be Worth $2 Per Month
Google Reader is sun-setting and shutting down on July 1st. Like most Google services, it was free – and in a world where many Web services are free, it's easy to forget that developers need to eat, too. If you're not the one paying for their lunch, then the money comes from advertisers. And that means you're the product, not the customer.
NFC Task Launcher: Make Your Phone Smart And Location-Aware [Android]
For me, a big part of a smartphone being "smart" is about automation - my phone should know when to switch Wi-Fi on and off on its own; it should be smart enough to be silent when I want it to be silent, and to ring at other times. Generally, it should just do what I want it to do without me having to remember to fiddle with settings throughout the day. There are a few ways to accomplish that.
What I MakeUseOf: Interviewing Roee Adler, Chief Product Officer At Soluto
Tools are awesome – if you read MakeUseOf, you probably agree. But the latest isn't always the greatest – rather, the greatest is whatever helps you get the job done, saves time, and just plain works. One good way to find those excellent tools is to see what an actual person uses in their daily life to get stuff done. Read on for a frank, detailed, and quite nerdy interview (with a computer museum inside).
The Windows 8 Task Manager: A Gem Hidden In Plain Sight
While many parts of Windows 8 are debatable (maybe Modern is the future; maybe it's not), one element of Windows 8 that has undergone a massive overhaul and made it unequivocally more awesome is the humble Task Manager – that modest window that helps you bail out of trouble whenever you hit Ctrl+Shift+Esc.
Too Good To Be True? Paul For Android Promises Video Without Buffering On The Go
Paul is one of the more ambitious Android apps I've come across in recent memory. Its Google Play banner makes a bold promise: "You will be enjoying videos from your favorite websites, with no buffering delays, and no worries about data overages from your mobile provider!" To get you the videos and music you want, Paul learns your preferences and creates your personalized profile.
Dribbble: A Treasure Trove of Visual Inspiration & Excellent Designers
The Web circa 2013 is a very visual place. Websites with glorious imagery abound, whether it's photo blogs like The Big Picture and friends, or sites like Pinterest that lets users create a visual archive of stuff they like. Then there are all the mobile apps we carry around in our pockets, be they Android or iOS. These have to look pretty too, from icons to screen layouts. If you're interested in the professional side of this aesthetic explosion, you should check out Dribbble.
Goodreads Reviewed: A Must-Use Site For Any Book Lover
If you enjoy reading, and like to use the Internet for finding great new reads, you may well have heard of Goodreads before: This is a superb website hosting a vibrant community of book lovers, teeming with book recommendations and reviews. In other words, an ideal place to find new reads.
Who Knew An Android Phone Has Screen Space For Floating Sticky Notes?
You may often come across a small detail you’d like to remember when you’re out of the house. If you have an Android device, you can always save it into Evernote or OneNote for Android; but personally, sometimes I find these apps an overkill, and end up emailing myself a single line instead. With Floating Stickies, a free app for Android, I may no longer have to do this.
A First Look at Discourse, a Next-Generation System for Forums
The forum is alive and well, embodied in XDA developers (just one of the seven best forums for learning about Android, for example). That's because, well, forums are needed. But do they really have to be so cumbersome? Certainly not, says Discourse, a cutting-edge project from Jeff Atwood, one of Stack Overflow's founders. Let's break Discourse down a bit, to see what it offers.
Learn To Build Your Own Furniture With These Impressive Carpentry & Woodworking Resources
Few things are as satisfying and relaxing as making something new with your own hands. Programming comes close, at least for me (and I've recently offered some tips on learning to code), but it's still quite different. Typing just isn't the same as clamping planks of wood together, drilling holes and watching something you've envisioned (or planned out in SketchUp) come to life. But where's a good place to start?
Do You Really Need The Most Expensive CPU? Find Out With CPU Boss
Picking out a CPU for your next computer is no mean feat. Of course, if you build your own desktop, you can usually go with a single motherboard and just swap out the CPU as you see fit (depending on your CPU socket type). But if your next computer is a laptop, picking out the right CPU becomes even more crucial: Once you buy a computer with a given processor, that's it - you're stuck with that processor for the lifetime of the computer.