apps

Set alerts for Gmail categories on Android

The new Gmail features a tabbed interface that sorts e-mail into Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. While this does make your in-box look a bit tidier, it can make the transition to the new style frustrating when it comes e-mail alerts.

Thankfully, you can set alerts for each category, and even disable them for others. When you get an alert on your Android device, you'll know what kind of e-mail you're receiving, and whether you need to read it right now.

Before you set the individual alerts, you need to make sure that notifications for your Gmail … Read more

Change privacy settings for shared posts in Facebook for Android

When sharing a post from the previous version of Facebook for Android, you may have forgotten to tap the itsy-bitsy people-sharing icon before you sent it off to the Interwebs. This icon controls the settings for who can see your post, be it Public, Friends, or other groups you're part of on Facebook. Fortunately, this icon hasn't gone anywhere, but in case you forget to use it, there's a fix -- and it doesn't involve logging in on the desktop Web site.

First, make sure you have the most recent version of Facebook for Android. Just … Read more

Ticket to Ride chugs onto Android

My awesome brother-in-law Steve introduced me to Ticket to Ride a couple years ago, and I've been hooked ever since. As board games go, it offers a near-perfect blend of strategy and luck-of-the-draw, on par with old classics like Risk and newer ones like Carcassonne.

Then came the iOS version, which CNET ranked among the 30 best iPad games -- and rightly so. It affords a decent single-player experience (something the board version can't) and moves the game along at a much speedier clip (meaning you can play alone or with others without investing quite so much time).… Read more

Install multiple apps with ease with Get Mac Apps

Dear recent graduate,

First off, congratulations. Secondly, allow me to ask: did you, perchance, receive a shiny, new MacBook for your scholastic achievements? Would you like to quickly and painlessly install a number of the more popular Mac apps on it this summer before heading off to college or into the real world? If so, I would direct your attention to a new Web app, Get Mac Apps.

Get Mac Apps makes it incredibly easy to install multiple apps at once. Simply head to its Web site and click on the apps you'd like to install. The site lists … Read more

Review: Clipster guides you in creating automatic, high quality videos to share

Clipster is a combination of social video creation and tutorial tool, streamlining the process of making videos while giving you enough tools to make them unique to your personality and vision. The result is an easy-to-use app that helps you craft engaging videos in just a few quick seconds, while building a library of clips you can use for future videos.

Clipster starts with a fairly basic but comprehensive five-part tutorial, walking you through how to create your first clips. You can then either use the existing clips that Clipster loads with or start recording your own right away. Recording … Read more

Cab-hailing apps get green light in NYC

Clearing the way for services like Uber, an appellate court Thursday lifted a temporary injunction on New York City's pilot plan to allow travelers to hail yellow cabs via smartphone. The plan, which challenges the traditional curbside street hail, has faced strong opposition from New York's livery and black-car operators.

Uber had just launched its New York taxi-hailing pilot program at the end of April when the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division issued the emergency injunction.

Today's news came just hours after another related legal victory for Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration. His plan to expand … Read more

Twitter for Windows Phone gets photo filters, more

The official Twitter app for Windows Phone got a huge update today, bringing it more in line with its siblings on iOS and Android. The most important of the new features is undoubtedly the photo filter tool, which comes with options like Vignette, Warm, Antique, and Cool.

Other new features include lens app integration, the ability to play Vine videos right from your timeline, and an option to save tweeted photos to your device.

The updated Twitter app is available now in the Windows Phone Store.

How to bring back the trash button in Gmail for Android

The new Gmail has undergone a huge refresh. The Web version now has a tabbed inbox to support categories and the mobile apps have an updated interface as well. If you've updated to the new Android app, you may have noticed that there's no longer a trash button in the toolbar when viewing a message. The new toolbar only has buttons for archive, mark, and move. If you flip the screen orientation to landscape, you'll also see an additional button for labels.

If you prefer to delete certain messages, rather than archiving everything, you can still use … Read more

Box pays developers to bring in more apps

Enterprise storage company Box will pay its third-party developers for users that help grow the platform, the company announced Thursday.

The company's new developer program, which launches with 10 developers but will expand to all developers within a month or two, will pay app creators based on user activity.

The focus is on users who not only spend a lot of time on the productivity apps provided by Box's OneCloud platform, but also draw in others by sharing files with people who are not Box users yet. Box already tracks how customers use various apps, so it's … Read more

Android keyboard now stands alone

It may not be a Swype or a SwiftKey killer yet, but the Google Keyboard is now available as a downloadable app.

A post Wednesday on Google+ touted the Google Play Store debut of the app, which offers "Gesture Typing" so that you can drag your finger from one letter to the next to spell words.

Google Keyboard offers some interesting competition for other swipe-to-write keyboards. Most notably, it's free where most of its competitors are not. It also has next-word suggestions, auto-complete, voice recognition, and support for 26 languages, although the keyboard itself is English-only for … Read more