productivity

Boomerang is a service that works with your Gmail to send e-mail later, give you follow-up reminders, and notify you if you don't hear back within a specific time. To use the service in the past, you had to install an extension for Chrome or Firefox.

Now there's Boomerang for Gmail on Android, an app that allows you to use all of the same features you expect from the Web versions on your smartphone or tablet.

One big reason for using the app alongside the desktop version is that you don't have to wait until you're … Read more

There's a lot of language Web sites out there. Some are definitely more well-known than others, but what if you want something that works really well on your device? That's when it's time to use an Android app instead of just a Web site. Here are three of the top language-learning apps on Android.

Most of Babbel's language packs feature 3,000 vocabulary words (though you'll need to download more data to complete the language pack). The vocabulary is divided into categories, so if you need to learn words related to … Read more

After a U.S. government agency received 13 reports of battery fires, including one that caused a "serious burn" to the user's leg, Best Buy has decided to recall thousands of replacement batteries for Apple's MacBook Pro laptops.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Wednesday that "consumers should stop using this product" because "the battery can catch fire while charging." The culprit product is ATG lithium-ion batteries and Best Buy is recalling about 5,100 of them.

Those batteries being recalled are both the black and white ATG replacement batteries … Read more

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

When watching a YouTube video in Firefox, you may want to switch to another tab in your Web browser to research something you just saw or heard, or maybe to a word processing application to take notes. If keeping your eyes on the video isn't a priority, then you don't need to worry about finding the pause button before doing either of these things. However, if you want to pause, there's a browser extension called YouTube Smart Pause that can do it for you automatically.

YouTube Smart Pause offers options to pause YouTube videos when … Read more

A cluttered computer desktop can be distracting and have a negative impact on productivity. You can take the time to close all the windows or maybe even use a program in full-screen mode, but that's not always practical or feasible. An alternative solution is dimming everything on your desktop, except for the window that you're working in. Le Dimmer, a small Windows program, can help you focus on the active window by creating a distraction-free environment. Here's how:

After you download Le Dimmer, extract the program to your hard drive. There are only two files in the … Read more

In his quarterly earnings letter to shareholders on Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that "Tesla reached profitability in the first quarter of 2013 for the first time in our 10-year history."

Not only did the electric car company exceed analyst expectations, but Musk said (PDF) Tesla even outdid its own expectations for deliveries and gross margin. The company reported adjusted earnings of 12 cents per share on revenue of $562 million, which is far higher than the expected 3 cents per share. Its profit was $11 million after charges.

Tesla's total revenue for the first quarter … Read more

Sometimes only so much explaining can be done with text on the screen. Adding a handwritten drawing or diagram can help pull together and solidify an idea. This is especially true when you're following along on a document that was given to you, like a business plan or notes for a class.

Polaris Office works with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe PDF files. When using this app on a Galaxy Note series device, you can use the included S Pen to draw directly in your documents. Here's how:

First, open a document or presentation in Polaris … Read more

In the first part of our Living with Chromebook series, I outlined the initial hardware and account setup required to use a laptop running Google's Chrome OS. In this second installment, the focus is on productivity.

For my long-form Chromebook test-drive, I'm spending most of my computing time with the HP Pavilion 14 Chromebook. Like the smaller 11- and 12-inch Chromebooks we've reviewed, it operates almost entirely within the Chrome Web browser, which looks and feels the same as the Chrome Web browser you may be using right now on your Windows or Mac OS computer.

That … Read more