For this edition of the best android phone app reviews we’re going to take a look at Tamagotchi l.i.f.e. a game that is probably meant to be more nostalgic than useful. This game was released about a month ago and I gave it a shot mostly for reliving my childhood. I had a tamagotchi when I was really young and this game is exactly that, Tamagotchi. It’s light on features with slight upgrades to graphics, but not much else. Check out the full review after the break.
Sep 13
Imagine this scenario. You’re driving home from a long day at work and you seem to be “stuck“ behind a driver who is very distracted from the road and the responsibility of driving her vehicle. We have all been there, and most of us can probably be considered offenders as well. Distracted driving refers to anything that takes your eyes or mental focus off of the road. It can be reaching for something on another seat, applying makeup, or even working your cars controls. The use of cell phones while driving has become a particular concern in recent years. This problem is particularly pronounced among young drivers.
In a recent Consumer Reports Survey, 63 percent of respondents under 30 years of age reported using a hand held phone while driving in the last 30 days; almost 1 in 3 texted. Alternately, of responders 30 and older, 41 percent used a cell phone while 9 percent sent text messages while driving in the last 30 days.
We all know of someone or have heard of someone who was severely injured or even died as result of a crash caused by a driver distracted by a cell phone and it has to stop. In the same Consumer Reports survey young drivers were asked what if anything made them reduce or even stop these behaviors. The most popular answers include, “I’ve read or heard about the dangers of distracted driving.” and “Laws that ban using a handheld cell phone and/or texting while driving”. While education is key, as proven time and time again, what else can be done? Carriers and application developers have answered the call to join the fight against distracted driving.
Nov 13
Adobe has recently released a free Photoshop App for mobile phones running Google’s Android software such as the new Motorola Droid. This is one of the coolest apps that I’ve seen released in a while, especially as the amount of megapixels in cell phone cameras continue to rise (the Droid comes with a legit 5 megapixel camera).
Photoshop for Android devices makes it incredibly easy to perform edits to photos on your smartphone and then upload them when you’re finished. When you open up a photo in your photo gallery, you are given the option to edit the photo. With a click, the photo opens in Photoshop, and you’re ready to start editing. At the top of the edit mode screen, there are three icons: crop, image correction and color effects, and soft focus. Under the crop icon, you can choose to crop, straighten, rotate, or flip the photo. If you click on the image correction and color effects icon, you have the ability to change the exposure, saturation, tint, or to make the photo black and white. The degree of these changes all depends on how far you slide your finger on the exposure, saturation, etc. scale. The soft focus button allows you to adjust the amount of “soft focus” that you wish to apply to the photo.
One of the nicest features of Photoshop for Android is that it has both an “undo” and a “redo” button, so you can make edits without fear of not being able to undo them.
Once you’ve finished editing your photos, you can upload them from your Android mobile phone directly to the Photoshop.com account, which comes free with 2GB (roughly 1,500 pictures) of storage for all Android devices. The photoshop.com account makes it easy to share photos online and is a good way to back up the photos on your mobile phone. You can even add captions before uploading. Android also has the ability to upload a large amount of photos even if the Photoshop app is not running, meaning you can be doing other things on your phone while photos are uploading to your Photoshop.com account. You can find a video demonstration of the Photoshop app for Android devices here.
