It’s a generally accepted fact that first mover advantage exists in all fields of life, including the online world. If you look at the most famous web services and applications today, this indeed seems to be the case. However, there are almost invariably always some exceptions to the general principle, and Facebook happens to be one of those. When today’s social networking giant entered the market, there were already big players like MySpace, Orkut and Hi5 in operation, but Facebook offered something different, continued to improve on it, and thrived with it. Today, the online portal boasts enough active members that had it been a country, it would’ve been one of the largest in the world by population.
Keeping up with the latest and greatest releases in the mobile industry can be a very expensive pastime. With each year comes a handful of new releases from each of the biggest tech companies, and if your favorite device happens to be of the Apple persuasion, your costings are as high as they get in the market. So while lots of consumers can count themselves as iPhone users, the vast majority will be in ownership of the older devices - running all the way back to the first couple of generations. Whited00r has long since given these older devices a freshen up, by offering a utility which makes them appear as though they're running on newer firmware and today, said utility has been updated for iOS 6.
2012 is drawing to a close, and among the bunch of round-up posts we're going to be seeing throughout the blogosphere, Apple has piped up prematurely with its annual Best Of list. Every year, the Cupertino company hand-picks its favorite apps of the year alongside the bestsellers, and with hundreds of thousands of new entries every year, it can be easy to miss some of the very best. Here, we run through each and every one.
Although Google is responsible for the upkeep, maintenance and development of the Android operating system, they have been making serious waves in the iOS world over the last 24-four hours with the expected release of their brand new Maps app for the iPhone and iPod touch. Users have been expecting Google to release their own iOS based mapping solution ever since it was announced that Apple would be rolling their own Maps application as part of iOS 6, but Google has taken things a little step further by also making their Maps SDK publicly available for iOS developers to include in their projects.
The Instant Video app from Amazon released earlier this year for those on iPad, but today, the service reaches out to those running an iPhone or iPod touch thanks to an update. With the larger Cupertino iOS devices unarguably superior when it comes to watching streaming content, it's only natural Amazon felt it best to launch the iPad version first, but now, the app has been made universal; details after the break.
Samsung's "phablet" Galaxy Note series has proved a surprise hit with consumers, and with the second iteration boasting one of the largest displays in the smartphone industry, its successor - according to a report from Samsung's native South Korea - will set a new benchmark in terms of screen real-estate. The Note II may already be enormous with its 5.5-inch offering, but as TheKoreaTimes reports, the Galaxy Note III could boast an eye-watering 6.3-inch display upon its release next year.
If ever there was an iPad app that would uncover the hidden, creative childlike features in all of us then the recently released Foldify app has to be it. We've been hearing the positive praises of this new app by Pixle for quite some time now, and it is eventually publicly available for users to download to their iPads directly from the App Store for $1.99. The core concept of the app may be to allow users to draw, create, print and fold unique little 3D figures, but the fun which Foldify provides goes way beyond digital origami, and is one of those apps that make us fall in love with the iPad all over again.
Jaws definitely dropped when Apple launched the first iOS 6 beta with no Google Maps support, but we have moved on since then through the Mapgate scandal and now we have the official launch of Google Maps for iOS through the App Store, that comes with a reported admission from within Google that this latest launch for Apple devices provides a better experience than its Android based counterpart.
It wasn't that long ago when Apple appeased users with the release of iTunes 11, bringing with itself tons of new changes under the hood, some good, and some, well, rather confusing.
If you’re an Android user and at all interested in modding your device, playing around with custom firmware, trying different recoveries, manipulating your device’s bootloader, or anything that falls under the umbrella of advanced usage, you are bound to have come across the term “ADB”. Abbreviation for Android Debug Bridge, ADB for the uninitiated, provides a terminal/command-line-based interface for interaction between your computer and Linux-based Android device. Packaged as a part of the platform tools in Android Software Development Kit (SDK), ADB allows app developers to tamper the internal components of the operating system; ones that are not available to the user otherwise. Since modding a firmware often deals with changing parts of the system, ADB is essential to gain those abilities.
