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With Tumblr for Android, using the megapopular blogging platform cum social network while on the go is a snap. The app lets you create and publish posts, read through posts by other bloggers you follow, and manage your account settings, all without much of a learning curve.

Just like when you sign on to Tumblr on the Web, the Android app opens you up directly to your Dashboard, where you see your main feed, with all the blogs you follow. Since the list self-updates, you can, in theory, scroll endlessly. The interface on the Dashboard looks and feels very much … Read more

Voice Assistant is a handy little app that accurately converts your words to text for use in e-mails, SMS messages, and social network status updates. It is not a Siri replacement for older iPhone users (you can't ask questions), but it does a surprisingly good job translating your words into text.

You start by choosing your language from 22 available, then the app brings up the sparse interface of a microphone button to record and a gear icon in the upper right for settings. From there, you simply hit the button to start recording and begin dictating. When you'… Read more

Your cousin just announced the birth of his child, and you're the very first to leave a congratulatory comment. The excitement for your beloved family member is quickly replaced with a steady flow of beeps and dings, alerting you to each and every comment left on the same post.

Luckily, there's a way for you to leave your comment and then politely excuse yourself from the conversation, without anyone even knowing.

Update: Facebook has since rolled out a new notification box, complete with a shortcut to unfollow posts. The method explained below still works, but you can save … Read more

Steve Jobs is gone, but he would be happy to hear about the death of the PC, the desktops and clunky laptops that were the face of computing for decades.

He spent the last decade of his career seeking to make digital devices that would supplant the beasts and feed the growing appetite for sleek, connected devices in the Internet era of computing.

Jobs sought to emulate the revolutionary spirit and impact of the 1984 Macintosh, but garner the sales and market share that Microsoft's Windows spawned in the same era. It was a quest for a kind of … Read more

Don't like playing by Apple's rules? Tough beans.

Because for the foreseeable future, Apple's financial power and customer appeal gives it a powerful command over the industry--everything from component suppliers to programmers. That poses all kinds of problems, but it also means we'll be moving much faster into the future of computing--call it the post-post-PC era.

Yesterday's launch of the new iPad shows just how complete that power is. Sure, we'll still have Windows PCs, Android phones, and even MacBooks, but the iPad is on a steady trajectory that leads from entertaining toward essential. … Read more

More than 20,000 people will roll into Austin, Texas, this week for the annual South by Southwest Interactive festival. The question is, besides copious amounts of free beer and barbecue, why are all those people--a broad mix of marketers, entrepreneurs, journalists, and social media junkies--showing up?

Over the years, SXSW has gotten bigger and has morphed from being an insular technology conference with a tight community of regular attendees to a mainstream event that appeals to everyone from those SXSW veterans to thousands of first-timers who want to get in on the action.

With that many people on hand … Read more

AOL just can't seem to catch a break this week, but a few pieces of bad news doesn't presage the demise of the Internet media giant.

First it lost CTO Alex Gounares, who wanted to move back to Seattle. Then it lost tech head Tim Dierks and sales exec Tim Castelli. And to top it all off, news leaked out that the struggling media giant is about to hand out pink slips in its West Coast office.

About the only piece of good news was the departure of TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld. The loss of the leader of … Read more

Andrew Breitbart, a controversial conservative blogger and commentator and one of the early proponents of Internet news, is dead.

According to CBS News and Breitbart's own site, the Los Angeles, native died this morning at the age of 43. CBS was told by the L.A. County Coroner's office that Breitbart died at UCLA Medical Center.

He had earlier collapsed while walking near his home. The exact cause of death was not disclosed.

In the mid-1990s, Breitbart was among those who recognized the Web's likely impact on media, leading him to begin corresponding with Matt Drudge, creator … Read more

Fans of blogs like PostSecret, magazines like Found, and of the strange allure of snapshots might want to take a look at a Tumblr blog called Torn Lives.

The site asks viewers to submit photos that have bits torn or cut away, and to include a short text that will somehow lend the incomplete photograph a sense of poetic wholeness (or at least poetic mystery).… Read more