Any respectable company wants to grow its user-base. Companies can't stay stagnant, they have to grow, or they will be eaten up by their competition. Microsoft isn't going to be eaten up any time soon, but their smartphone platform isn't growing -- at least not compared to their competition. It shouldn't come as a surprise for anyone who has been following the news: Windows Phone is still a distant third in the smartphone race. What's a mega-corporation like Microsoft to do in this situation? Try to steal Android users, of course! Android and iOS dominate the market, and Microsoft knows ...

Android Jelly Bean has some pretty sweet lock-screen widgets built-in, but they're limited to just one widget per panel. If you want to control your music, see how many missed calls you have, what your battery status is, or check the weather forecast you've either got to have a lot of lock-screen widgets spread across a lot of panels -- which sort of defeats the purpose -- or you need a lock screen widget that packages all these into one. Of course, another option is just to replace your lock screen with a new one. C Lock Screen is a replacement for your stock lock screen that puts ...

I recently introduced my mother, a self-professed luddite, to the social photo-sharing app Instagram. It was a magical experience. In less than fifteen minutes, my mother was using faux HDR to bring out the midtones in her photos, slapping some frames on them, and sharing them across her just-created Instagram friends list (populated with many more Facebook-sourced names than either of us expected). None of the recent controversy surrounding Instagram's new terms of service mattered to my mom in this new world of photo-sharing, her first encounter with such a single-purpose social app. Its ...

Like any kid who grew up with an abundance of time, books, and VHS movies, I like quoting things. From face-to-face interactions to phone calls to muttering to myself as I do dishes, about 1% to 2% of my daily vocal output is comprised of out-of-context quotes from a brain chock-full of memorable snippets. That ratio expands to about 10% on the internet; half of my time on Twitter is spent sharing senseless quotes, the symptom of a lifetime spent watching too much Star Trek and Growing Pains. Think I'm weird? You're right- but I'm not alone. Surely you've noticed the propensity of your ...

Notifications on Android are great and very convenient, but many of us spend much of our time in front of a traditional desktop or laptop computer with out phones nestled snugly in our pockets or pouches. Let's face it, not all notifications are important, but you don't know if that notification you just heard was spam or a vital text message until you pull out your smartphone and take a look. DeskNotifier is a set of apps that aim to resolve that by pushing notifications from your Android to your computer. You'll need the desktop app and the Android app to get started. Hit the play ...