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Tap That App: Vlingo Voice with InCar

Smartphones do all sorts of amazing things that make them useful in a driving situation, but their interfaces usually aren't optimized for operation at 65 mph. The screens are too small, the buttons are too hard to hit at arm's length, and the design of their applications often requires a user's full attention to read messages or input queries for search. Making matters worse, touching a phone (even one in a cradle) is of questionable legality in many areas. Vlingo Voice with InCar for Android aims to address all of these issues in one application.

Vlingo Voice … Read more

How to create a BitTorrent personal content channel

BitTorrent 8, released last week in beta, contains a sharp new feature that makes it easier than ever to create torrents of your personal files and share them with a personal group of friends or colleagues. The feature implementation isn't expected to change by the time that BitTorrent 8 graduates to its final version, so this How To ought to be viable for some time.

Once you've installed BitTorrent 8 beta (download), take a quick tour of some of the public content channels that come with the program. This part isn't essential, however, it's worth seeing … Read more

Chrysalis brings content distribution to BitTorrent

BitTorrent launched its next-generation torrent client in a public beta today, offering people a unique system for not just sharing content via torrents but also for socializing the experience and turning the tool into one with deep content discovery hooks. BitTorrent 8 beta (download) contains one enormous change from the alpha that launched in March: personal content channels, which streamline the torrent creation and sharing process to allow you to share high-quality versions of your homemade videos, audio, and photos with friends.

As announced at CES 2011, the implementation is unique to BitTorrent, and an integral part of its push … Read more

How to use Google Music Beta for Android

Google Music Beta launched, allowing you to upload your entire music library to the cloud. For now, the service is free, and songs you upload can be accessed on any computer or Android device (actually, it's iOS-compatible, too).

Invitations will roll out over the next few weeks, but the Android app is available for download immediately. Here's how to use it:

Request a Google Music account. You don't need one to use the Android app, but go to music.google.com/music/ and request an invite so you can upload your music library on to Google's … Read more

The 404 818: Where we get more competition through lotion signal (podcast)

Yesterday's Google I/O event announcements give us plenty of Android-related topics to discuss today. As if you needed another reason to fear Google, the company is asking you to invite them into your home with Project Tungsten, which could potentially control any electronic device from irrigation systems to game controllers and even lightbulbs.

Google also teased its new cloud-based music system and a 3.1 update to its Android operating system, but it's not all tech talk, though! Tune in for listener photo submissions for Jeff's Honeybadgers hockey team logo and a review of Fast Five!

The 404 Digest for Episode 818

Google I/O day one: Android is on top. Android.next: Honeycomb 3.1 now, Ice Cream Sandwich later. Google's unlicensed cloud-based music service arrives in beta. Brooklynbri and Kodzo's Honey Badger hockey team logos!

Episode 818 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Google I/O kicks off

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded:

$20/month Chrome laptops?

Ford and Google teaming up

Microsoft buys Skype

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Microsoft buys Skype

Google's Music Beta

Underage Facebook users

Music labels to Google: We're counting on Apple

If Apple rolls out a cloud music service next month, the offering could appear a little dated.

First Amazon and now Google have launched services that enable users to store music libraries on the companies' servers and access them from a variety of devices. This sort of computing via the Internet, rather than on a given PC, is known as cloud computing.

Google unveiled the beta version of its music storage service yesterday at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco. Amazon unveiled its Cloud Player and Cloud Drive offerings in late March.

But the services offered by Amazon … Read more

Music Beta vs. Amazon Cloud

Google has finally launched Music Beta, a cloud service that stores your music and lets you stream it to any browser or Android-based device. It's invite-only for now, but the beta version is free. It's not without its limitations, but we think it will certainly become a viable competitor against Amazon's recently released Cloud Player. Here, we present a chart that compares the two services.

Music Beta Amazon Cloud Player Storage capacity 20,000 songs Anywhere from 5GB to 1TB (that works out to around 740 to 152,000 songs, assuming each song is around 4 minutes long recorded at 255Kbps) Cost Free and invitation-only for now. 5GB storage for free; $20/year for 20GB, and $1,000 a year for 1TB. Songs bought on Amazon don't count against the limit. Offline options Recently played songs are automatically cached for offline listening on Android devices. You can also manually select songs/albums for offline listening. But you can't download songs to a different computer. You can download the songs to a different computer/device without restrictions. Amazon Cloud Player also uses caching to optimize streaming on Android. Free music Google provides some free samples during initial setup None Store None Yes; songs cost $0.69 to $1.29 and albums are $7 on average. There are often $3.99 album deals as well. Mobile Android app; playable on iOS via the browser Android app; playable on iOS via the browser Requirements Google account. U.S. only for now. Amazon account. U.S. only for now. Other features Custom playlists that can be synced with the cloud, intelligent mix Amazon's Cloud service extends beyond just music. Sorting New & Recent, Songs, Artists, Albums, Genres, Time, Song Title, Plays, and Rating. Songs, Albums, Artists, Genres, Time Edit song info? Yes No

Buzz Out Loud 1466: Google and the nine OS strategy, and Microsoft buys Skype (Podcast)

Huge news day today, with Google's I/O presentation packing about a day's worth of news into a single hourlong presentation--and this is just the first day. We wonder whether Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Chrome OS can exist in the same world, and whether the music labels will ever again get a seat at the table. Plus, why Microsoft bought Skype, cellphones getting disaster notification texts, and the New Yorker comes to the iPad. --Molly