samsung galaxy s2

Just few days before, Google announced Nexus 7, Nexus Q and the most important one - Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. As we known, Nexus 7 runs Android 4.1 now, and Google Nexus devices will update to Android 4.1 in July. Xoom from Motorola also can get his update directly from Google. But it still be a mystery when the other Android device can get this update, which we can sure some of them can never get this update.

Well, no matter which one device can get this update first, let's check the 5 best improvements android features from Android 4.1.


Project Butter

Google started an internal effort called “Project Butter” to make the JellyBean UI “buttery smooth”, and you can definitely tell a difference based on side-by-side comparisons. Project Butter's aim is to make Android run at a solid 60fps, complete with triple buffering and forced vsync. Butter also aims to improve touchscreen responsiveness, and how the system tracks your finger. It does this by predicting where your finger will be.

Voice Service
when you pressed the voice icon and spoke a command or query, Android had to digitize your voice, upload it to the cloud, process the waveform, turn it into text, and send the text back down to your phone.

Better Notifications

Android already has the best notification system of any mobile OS, but in JellyBean Google is taking it to the next level. It allows complex actions and more ways to interact with alerts. For example, you'll be able to tap a missed call message and have the option to ring the caller back. Developers will also have the flexibility to craft custom notifications for their apps.

Google Now

Google Now will lean heavily on Google searches you've conducted in the past to learn your likes to better anticipate your wishes. It will also use real-time location data provided by your handset to make more targeted suggestions. You can opt out of this if you like, but it enables new services such as reviews of restaurants as you walk by them, and sports scores of teams you care about delivered automatically to your device.

Resizable widgets

Home screen widgets will be easier to use in JellyBean. When you drag a widget to the home screen, other widgets will move out of the way, or the one you are dragging will resize itself to fit. This is a feature I'd be happy to have since one of the most frustrating notifications to receive in Android is that there's no more room on a given screen to drop your widget down upon.

Besides those features, is there another one you prefer to? Just post it below the comment!

Android phones are about to get one of the best apps made for the iPhone and iPad: Flipboard, the popular social news magazine, is finally heading to Android phones today.

"People are using Flipboard on one out of every 10 iPads right now," Flipboard co-founder and CEO Mike McCue told ABC News. "We looked at the Android device specifically, and all the different screen sizes, and made sure Flipboard would look great on all those different types of phones."

Flipboard was released for the iPad in 2010 and then for the iPhone a few months later. The app allows users to sign in to their Facebook, Twitter, or other supported social networks, and it displays the status updates, links and pictures in an interactive magazine format. With the Android app, Flipboard also added a Flipboard widget that updates with new stories.

The app will be preloaded on the new Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone, which is launching with all four major U.S. carriers this month.


It took the time to get the Android app right, the Flipboard founders said.

"The biggest challenge is designing an experience for the smartphone in general," McCue said. "People need a quick way to catch up on their phone."

The Android app looks a lot like the iPhone app in terms of look and feel.

However, there is one big missing piece with Flipboard's new Android offering -- an Android tablet app. While Flipboard is incredibly popular on the iPad, the Android app wasn't built or designed for larger-screened Android devices. The phone app doesn't display as much on the screen as the tablet app. However, the phone app will also be available for the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet.

"We started with Android phones, we see a lot of them out in the wild," McCue said.

"We are still in a wait-and-see mode with Android tablets," Flipboard co-founder Evan Doll said. "The iPad is the flagship tablet and we are going to stay focused on it."

But Flipboard isn't done building. McCue and Doll are focused on how to make it easier for users to get content. The company recently added YouTube and Google+ integration to the service.

"We are going to try it to make it easy for the people you care about to bring content in front of you and have the most important things find you so you don't have to find them," Doll said.

Flipboard will be available starting today for free in the Google Play Store, Amazon Appstore for Android, and the Barnes & Noble NOOK Store.

Download here

Source: ABCNews

I recently took a stroll around the rooftop garden on the 14th floor of the Shindorim Technomart. On this day, there happened to be a display of Bonsai trees on display. Some trees were over 120 years old! Talk about a hobby requiring patience.
















They also had a complimentary display of old men as well




After strolling around for awhile, I managed to score a free arial tour of the Technomart and Shindorim station area. Very interesting.












On this final pass around the complex, I saw the uniquely curved Posville building where I recently lived. And you can also see I didn't throw stones.

Location:Shindorim Technomart

Well, actually I think this kind of app is really not so popular as keyboard or video player. But it still be useful when you download the file with Zip format from some websites or E-mail. OK, today I will list 3 best zip file manager which can only organize the zip and related files. No argument about other files manager.

3. WinZip (Rated: 4.2)

Now the world's #1 zip utility makes it easy to view, open and save zip files on your Android device, whether they're attached to an incoming email, downloaded from a web page or opened from an SD memory card.

WinZip for Android top features

• View supported file formats directly within the WinZip app. Easily open other popular formats with 3rd-party app integration.
• Open encrypted Zip files (including AES128 and AES256) to review sensitive material safely while on the go.
• Copy unzipped content to the clipboard to paste into an email or another application. Save the last extracted zip file to access at later time.

2. ArchiDroid (Rated: 4.4)

Easy to use archive manager. [RAR, ZIP, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2 and 7zip]

• App ArchiDroid: Easy to use archive manager.
• Unpacking of RAR, ZIP, TAR, GZIP (gz), BZIP2 (bz2), tar.bz2, tar.gz and 7ZIP* (7z) archives.
• Unpacking of encrypted ZIP and RAR (password protected) archives.
• Support of multi-volume (split) RAR archives.
• In some browsers and file managers you will be able to move quickly to the process of unpacking.
• Can create simple or encrypted ZIP archives.

*7ZIP archives with Copy or LZMA codec. Some methods require 128MB of free memory on sdcard

1. AndroZip File Manager (Rated: 4.5)

AndroZip File Manager helps you copy, delete, move, search, and organize your files, music, pictures, and folders just like you would do on your PC.

• With over 5 million downloads and its support of ZIP, encrypted ZIP, RAR, TAR, GZIP and BZIP2. 
• AndroZip File Manager is definitive leader among similar applications on the market.
• Besides the archive functionality it also lets you send files, e.g. via email.
• Optimized specifically for both, phone and tablet displays. Due to many added features like drag and drop functionality, AndroZip File Manager is preferred among tablet users.
• Use it also to back up your applications and install new application APK on your phone, and manage phone memory and resources via task manager.
• Installs to SD card.

5 Top Rated Free File Managers for Android Phones and Tablets

A report made the news this week from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), concluded that "people's weight, and not just population size, should be taken into account when planning how to deal with increasing pressure on the planet's dwindling resources."

In a little-reported footnote, we also learn that orbital computer algorithms and GPS receiver firmware worldwide have required updating over the past six months.  This has happened because the mass of the earth, once considered a universal constant, is now a variable.  And, one that's proving quite difficult to calculate.

Various organizations are taking different approaches to calculating the new mass of the earth.  One obvious way is to factor in the population of the earth, and account for the increasing average body weight.  The problem is this data lags the "true mass" by years, due to the time it takes to collect and tabulate the data.  Others are using more indirect factors, such as customized "fast food" stock market indices or proprietary production data from worldwide belt manufacturers.  Dr. Oliver Heaviside commented "we had heard about this effect, but didn't appreciate it fully until our calculations of the recent Transit of Venus were off by 8-1/2 seconds". 

NASA has been sending algorithm updates to it's various probes and satellites currently in space. Tracking stations worldwide are modifying their software accordingly. Individual owners of GPS navigation systems worldwide should contact the manufacturer and request a firmware upgrade.

A security company has identified five leading types of malware in the wild that could be dangerous to Android phone and tablet users, including one that snags personally identifiable information and another that can send and read text messages.

SophosLabs said Thursday it examined statistics from the installations of its Android mobile security app on devices in 118 countries, and the "volume of malware that we've discovered highlights that mobile security is a real and growing problem, especially on Android," said Graham Cluley, senior security consultant at Sophos.

"Criminals are creating more and more targeted malware for different platforms, and smartphone users need to wise up to the fact that security is no longer limited to PCs, but mobiles and tablets are also at risk if not sufficiently protected."

There are now more than 460,000 apps in the Google Play market for Android, according to AppBrain, although there are other sources for downloading Android apps. And it is those other sources than can cause trouble.

Chet Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos, told msnbc.com that most users get infected when they "side-load" apps. "This is the act of loading programs from non-official sources ... Often they are 'paid' apps offered for free by pirates who load them up with mobile Trojans."

Naturally, there isn't any obvious way to know when you've been infected, he said. "You might find out when charges appear on your mobile phone bill, or if your accounts start to become compromised. The best approach is to run security software on your phone to screen for anything malicious."


In February, Google introduced "Bouncer," a scanning service designed to identify malicious apps in Google Play. But recently, two security researchers crafted a malicious Android app called HelloNeon to the Play Market, and the app made it through Bouncer's scan untouched.

We asked Google for comment about Sophos' findings, and will update this post when we hear back. But when Bouncer was introduced, Google vice president of Android engineering Hiroshi Lockheimer wrote on the company's blog that:

While it’s not possible to prevent bad people from building malware, the most important measurement is whether those bad applications are being installed from Android Market - and we know the rate is declining significantly.

Sophos said among the most frequently found types of Android malware in the wild were these:

1. Andr/PJApps-C. "Most commonly these are paid for apps that have been hacked. They are not necessarily always malicious, but are very likely to be illegal."

2. Andr/BBridge-A. This one can "install additional malicious apps onto your Android device. It uses HTTP to communicate with a central server and leaks potentially identifiable information.

"These malicious apps can send and read SMS messages, potentially costing you money. In fact, it can even scan your incoming SMS messages and automatically remove warnings that you are being charged a fee for using premium rate services it has signed you up for."

3. Andr/BatteryD-A. "This 'Battery Doctor' app falsely claims to save battery life on your Android device. But it actually sends potentially identifiable information to a server using HTTP, and aggressively displays" advertising.

4. Andr/Generic-S. "These range from privilege escalation exploits to aggressive adware such as variants of the Android Plankton malware."

5. Andr/DrSheep-A. "Remember Firesheep? The desktop tool that can allow malicious hackers to hijack Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin sessions in a wireless network environment? Andr/DrSheep-A is the Android equivalent of the tool."

Sophos does have a free anti-malware program for Android users. Whether you choose it or another company's, the time has definitely come to get protection.

Source: msnbc