WinLaunch: Mac OS X or iPad launcher for Windows
WinLaunch allows Windows users to have the same look and feel as Mac OS X or iPad. Check it out and download in the video below.
5 Apps To Keep up with Your Favorite TV Shows
A few short years ago it would have been a pipe dream to think of following information on TV shows through your phone or computer, much less watched them there. Even when smartphones began to roll out, it was something most could only yearn for.
Now, it is a pretty standard part of life. We watch television streaming online all the time. Companies are starting to offer more content on such sites as YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Comcast Xfinity. Not to mention all the unauthorized streamers that have popped up all over the web.
No longer is it a matter of where to find TV content, but who has the best app for the job. Sticking with the legal ones, here are the five best authorized apps for streaming your favorite TV shows, both old and new.
1. Showtime
One of the most well know premium channels out there, Showtime has offered some incredible shows in the last several years. “The L Word” and “Dexter” are two examples of wildly popular ones that were considered instant hits. If you have a love for these shows and want an app to help you watch them, and you have a subscription to the service, try this download. It is a nice, streaming app free to subscribers and it is smooth and easy to use.
2. Matcha
Find ratings, catch up on missed shows and create queues on this website. User friendly and simple to use, it has remained a favorite for years and will continue to be over time. It has a nice system that tells you what you have yet to watch, so you don’t have to keep track when you fall behind or start on a series that has been running for awhile or already finished.
3. TV Recaps
This is a good place to learn about where shows you want to watch are located on the web. It goes by episode, providing you with a list of links to choose from in a similar way to sites like SideReel or ProjectFreeTV. There isn’t much to it, but if you want a simple master list for your favorite shows, this is a great place to go.
4. Hulu Plus
Hulu is quickly becoming one of the biggest streaming websites around. The Plus service allows you to get a wide access of content, such as full TV shows and even series for viewing, for a very low price. Right now they are giving new users a month-long free trial, so check them out. The app is available for both Apple and Android, as well as a desktop app.
5. Netflix
The biggest online rental service around, the instant streaming service is both cheap and fantastic. Of course, they don’t provide new shows but they are quick to update series once it ends. They also have a ton of movies. Their app is one of the better ones, and of course you can easily stream them through devices onto your TV.
Conclusion
Piracy online is a hot button topic, especially since laws like SOPA and ACTA have been argued or enacted. But there are plenty of safe, legal ways to watch your favorite shows. What are some of your favorite sites? Let us know in the comments.
Tom Chu is the SEO manager at PsPrint, an online printing company specializing in business card and poster printing among other popular services. Find me in Google+
5 iPhone Apps to Color-Inspire
Are you obsessed with color? Maybe you find yourself daydreaming about color palettes and schemes or making mental notes of combinations you just feel work. Or you could always be seeking out that next great hue to use in some kind of personal or professional project.
You aren’t as strange as you might think. Plenty of people absolutely love color, and they look out for it all the time. If you are an iPhone owner, you can use your smartphone to help fuel your obsession, such as through these five excellent apps offered through iTunes.
1. Color Stream
An excellent (and free) app, Color Stream allows you to create unique color palettes using several different tools. They can be easily generated from scratch, through using the color schemer or by drawing the colors out of photos taken from the web or through your iPhone camera. Color palettes can be saved, named and rated, so you can sort them more efficiently. They can also be shared by placing them in your photo library, where they can be emailed to any contact.
2. cliqcliq Colors
Originally, this ran with Colors, a company that helped designers create color palettes through their site. But the company is closing in August and will not be available after that point. However, the app itself is still great. It is a useful generator that lets you pull colors from images or make your own hues and then save and send them to email addresses, photo-editing software and sharing sites like Flickr.
3. Color Expert
One of the more feature-heavy color apps out there, it is also more costly at $9.99 for the download. But the tools are more advanced and powerful, which makes it worth the cost. You have an interactive color wheel with easy hue and shade selection with different types of color, which can be saved. Then there is the ability to tap to draw a color from any image, including those you take while in the app. There is a great feature that gives you access to Pantone’s swatch library, as well.
4. Picture Effect Magic
One of the best photo editing and effect apps on the iTunes market, this isn’t just for color. But it allows you to manipulate and play with color, bringing some out and drawing back the rest to black and white. It can be a great way to take photos and isolate hues and shades.
5. ClaireVue
Another interesting photo app, this one will give you a new angle to use for viewing colors. It works by taking pictures in the dark and can actually draw out some really cool hues that you might not have otherwise seen. It is amazing what differences there are between one color in the light and in the dark.
Conclusion
There are a lot of photo apps around, but not so many involving color. These are the best I have found, even though there are a few good ones that are available internationally. Sadly, some of those don’t work in the United States at the moment – fingers crossed that they will soon!
Tom Chu is the SEO manager at PsPrint, an online printing company specializing in brochure and poster printing among other popular services. Follow PsPrint on Twitter and Facebook
5 Best Apps to Facebook on Your iPad
Combining Facebook and the Apple iPad is like adding chocolate syrup to already delicious ice cream; two awesome things coming together tend to result in only more awesomeness! While it is definitely possible to simply surf to Facebook via an iPad browser, a whole world of fun and useful functionality is waiting to be unlocked by the right apps.
More than a few of them are available in iTunes to access the world’s favorite social networking site; here we’ll help you narrow down five of the very best!
1. MyPad App
Endorsed by Wired Magazine as the best app for Facebook on the iPad, there is no question as to why MyPad is the most popular Facebook app in the iTunes store. Where even the official Facebook app fails to offer the new timelines feature, MyPad takes the functionality and excels, offering a stream of cover photos in a way not possible even on the Facebook web site. Chat, a much-maligned missing feature for Facebook users on an iPad, is built-in and an included browser handles any external links you may come across.
MyPad also serves as an award-winning Twitter platform for the iPad, an added draw for users of both social networks.
2. Friended App
Offering a unique column view allowing for heaps of data to be neatly presented on a minimal screen, users with a large circle of friends and those who use Facebook for extensive content consumption will find the Friended app invaluable. Built specifically for the iPad’s screen real estate and touch functioning, there simply isn’t a Facebook app available for the iPad today that beats the excellent interface offered by Friended.
3. Facely HD App
Speaking of usability, Facely HD is an app aimed at making life simple for the average Facebook user through a large and easily navigable interface. It’s crisp and over-sized layout is fully skinable to give it a unique look and always makes for simple Facebook surfing with a negligible number of distractions.
Facely HD doesn’t stop with its pretty look, though; full-featured chat (missing in the official Facebook app) is available along with push notifications for messages, friend requests, chat notifications, pokes and more, meaning that you are alerted to your friends’ actions faster than with any other Facebook app; faster even than surfing Facebook.com on a PC!
4. Friendly App
Many Facebook users are photography buffs, visiting the site to share their latest pics with friends, family and fans. For the photo lovers out there is the Friendly app, a Facebook app with a fun twist for images that gives you the ability to add cool effects to your pictures before adding them to your Facebook albums, including options such as black and white, mirror image and sepia tone, along with 13 others.
Additional exclusive features of the Friendly app include multiple logins, allowing you to share your iPad with other Facebook users with zero disruption to your account, and the ability to edit profile details via a nifty included browser.
5. Official Facebook App
The original Facebook app available in the iTunes store gets an honorable mention here for its official status and high-usage. Covering all typical uses of Facebook save for chat, the official app is, of course, free and will suit the needs of many non-power users with its simple interface and intuitive functioning. If no bells and whistles are required, you may find this app is all that you need.
Conclusion
The Facebook app you choose will end up being based on your individual needs, and don’t forget that multiple apps can be installed to serve multiple functions, if necessary. If an all-purpose app like MyPad doesn’t have you covered, there are always specialized apps available in iTunes to help you cover all of your favorite Facebook uses on your Apple iPad. In any event, it should be clear to everyone that there is just no need to settle for the Facebook experience within a mobile browser!
Olivia writes for the PsPrint Blog and has been covering small-business and freelance news for a number of years. PsPrint is an online printing company.
i Life Solutions: Best In Home Personalised Theatre
i life Solutions is an awesome new home entertainment and home automation company that is taking home theatres to the next level. i life Solutions provides home cinema’s, multi-room audio and video, and control systems. These solutions are being places in home of the rich and famous, multi dwelling units and hotels and commercial projects.
i Life’s home cinema collection has some amazing projects (but im sure they dont come cheap). Projects can be found on the: River Thames, Bristol, St Albans, Totteridge and more. It seems like your basic home theatre setup will cost you around £10,000. I really wish I could afford to spend that on my living room, I cant even get my girlfriend to agree to a large screen tv.
St Albans is an iLife home automation technology solution. This offers a B&W 7.1 surround sound system complete with Denon amplifier / processor; Draper drop down screen; Sim 2 projector and Phillips Pronto control. This is great for anyone who loves their music and films.
If your looking for a home theatre solution and you have the pounds to shell out for quality, then you have to get in touch with i Life.
Musikki: New Musician Directory / Search Engine
Musikki is a new musician directory which combines information from YouTube, Last.fm and more. On a typical Musikki page you can find music vides, tour dates, maps for tour dates, bio, twitter conversations, discography and more.
Musikki seems like a pretty good idea, but it feels like a cheap version of Last.fm at the moment. It needs to be a little more than just a simple music directory / search tool.
If typing “Artist Name” and “Band” into Google is way too much effort for you, it might behoove you to check out Musikki, a search engine especially for bands.Although simple — and still in the beta stage — Musikki is an odd delight to use: Simply search for a band to surface videos, tweets containing the band’s name, Last.fm events, bio, discography and photos.
Also — and this is probably the coolest part — the service suggests similar or related artists. A search for “Total Slacker” reminded me of the existence of Philip Seymour Hoffman (the band), which I promptly downloaded.
One can also share band search results via Facebook and Twitter.
Again, Musikki is nothing fancy at present, and still appears to have some bugs — a search for “Man Man” delivered The Tallest Man on Earth’s discography — but it’s definitely an amusing way to cruise for music.
Google Offers Available in Charlotte, Kansas City, Milwaukee, San Antonio and Tampa
Google Offers is expanding in the USA today. Google Offers is the daily deal service from Google that has been hyped up, but doesnt seem to have grown like the other services in the market. Anyways.. Google Offers will soon be available in Charlotte, Kansas City, Milwaukee, San Antonio and Tampa.
You can check all the debut deals for the new cities here and sign for the service over at www.google.com/offers.
Nokia Lumia 900 Preview
If there’s one thing that CES is good for, it helps build up feverish anticipation for the latest consumer gadgets soon to hit the market in the coming year. Many devices stood out during this year’s convention, but few garnered as much critical praise as the Nokia Lumia 900. It’s got the goods required to make it one of the top-selling smart phones of 2012, and can easily do so as AT&T’s network continues to improve. Why is the Nokia Lumia 900 so widely-lauded? Let’s take a look at the relevant information, and you can decide for yourself whether or not the hype is justified.
Hardware and Features
Under the hood, the Lumia 900 boasts a 1.4 GHz Qualcomm CPU, 512 MB of RAM, and 16 GB of on-board storage. It sports front and rear-facing cameras as you’d expect from any phone, as well as a few aesthetic touches that are lacking in other phones on the market at the moment for the same price. One thing that strikes you immediately when seeing the Lumia 900 for the first time is its effortless class. It just looks solid, despite the lack of brushed aluminum. It’s one of the slimmest smartphones phones available on the market, and comes in a distinctive cyan tone that’s tough to forget.
Software, UI, and More
Once released into the wild, the Lumia 900 will be running the excellent Windows Phone 7.5 operating system, one that’s gaining market share and consumers every day. According to MBA Online, Understanding market context is necessary for implementing innovative products. Microsoft understood that a competitive operating system today needed visible icons and informative home screens, and Windows Phone does just that. That alone should give potential buyers a reason to at least give it a shot. Aside from WP7′s technical merits, it’s particularly peppy on the Lumia 900. Microsoft doesn’t really get enough credit for WP7, because it really is a decent operating system. It looks great, and performs even better. It’s a bit of a change of pace from Android or iOS, but it’s well worth making the effort. Mango’s tile-based interface is easily one of the slickest mobile experiences you can get nowadays.
Network and Carriers
Like the Nokia Lumia 710 before it, the 900 will come on AT&T’s still-evolving 4G network. At present, the 4G layout of AT&T’s wireless setup is obviously behind that of Verizon. However, that’s hardly the drawback that many make it out to be. AT&T offers much the same speeds that can be achieved in certain areas on Verizon, though that’s more or less only applicable in urban areas. Elsewhere, you’ll have to rely on Ma Bell’s 3G HSPA+ service to get you through the night. Still, 3G with AT&T can be appreciably better than with other networks, as some field tests will attest.
Final Thoughts
The Nokia Lumia 900 has many things going for it, and none of them are particularly superlative in their own categories. The hardware isn’t dominant, the operating system isn’t Android, and AT&T isn’t really the best 4G network. The Lumia 900 is generating such massive levels of enthusiasm due in large part to its flawless execution. Some times these things happen by design, and other times by happenstance. Regardless, the Lumia 900 running WP7 is one of the most promising phones of 2012. Absent a gigantic solar flare that renders the world’s telecommunications infrastructure useless, it’ll be a hit because it’s one of the best overall phones to come along in a long time.
5 Tools to Make Your Computer Friendlier For Those With Poor Eyesight
There are a number of problems people can have with their eyesight. They might be colorblind and so have trouble viewing certain sites. They could be legally blind and so unable to see anything, instead using a reader to help them navigate the web. Or, they could just have vision problems or “old eyes”, their sight deteriorating over time.
Whatever the case, if you are one of these people you might be wanting to make your computer a little more user friendly. Here are a couple of handy tools to help you along.
NoSquint
Are you tired of having to squint your eyes at the computer screen? Do you find yourself unable to turn the font size up high enough? This Firefox addon allows you to zoom in and out of sites either globally, or on a per-page basis. You are able to override the default of the site on text only and full page formats, and change foreground and background colors to your specifications.
Readpal
Whether you have poor eyesight or difficulty focusing on text, this program for Windows can really help you. It isolates text and restructures it in an easier to view format that will keep you concentrating and reducing eye strain. It can be applied to compatible Windows applications such as Word, Notepad, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.
Size Firefox Addon
URL’s are hard to read at the best of times, but when you have trouble with your vision it is especially difficult. The address bar can be increased, however, using this nifty little add on. It is compatible with the latest version of Firefox, and there is no configuration needed. Just download it and enjoy the larger URL bar.
Vischeck
Are you making a website and you want to make sure colorblind users are able to view it? Vischeck is an excellent program that simulates colorblindness in various forms, showing you want sites and images look like for someone who cannot properly process certain tones and shades.
Readable
This is a default format override addon for Firefox. It allows you to choose the layout, background color, font color and size of text and images. They have a manual select feature for simplified versions of the same text, as well.
Conclusion
You don’t have to strain your eyes or avoid certain sites. These tools are great for increasing the readability of any web page. What are some of the tools you use? Let us know in the comments.
Annie is a geeky blogger for Direct Sight, the premiere supplier of cheap glasses based in the UK.
