apps
Browse websites differently using SurfCube
SurfCube brings a whole new surfing experience to Windows Phone 7. If you’re looking for an alternative browser that’s not merely a fancy skin over the default browser, and actually functions differently, SurfCube might be your cup of tea. This alternative web browser for WP7 basically puts your whole surfing experience on a “cube” (it’s hard to call it a cube since not all 4 sides are equal in length- it’s more of a cuboid, but I digress). You view your webpages on the front face of the cube, while you turn the cube to the right to see your history, down to see your favorites, left to see your settings and up to see your tabs. While this seems like a gimmick on paper, in the video demonstration it actually looks very useful. You get the full screen just for viewing websites- no unnecessary toolbars to clutter up the limited space on a mobile phone, and all you need are simple swiping gestures to access the different features. With options like bandwidth saving mode that turns off pictures to load your pictures faster, orientation lock and flick detection so you can flick the phone to turn the cube, SurfCube has been well thought-out and designed to bring a new experience to surfing with a mobile phone. The app is now available for download in the Windows Marketplace for $1.99, and there is a fully functioning trial version you can download as well. Hit the break to watch a video demo of SurfCube:
Apple is well known to be a company that continues to push the envelope when it comes to technological advancements and firsts. This time around, Cupertino has introduced the first ever automated security update for Mac computers in order to assist them in preventing attacks from recently identified bugs, which are also the very same bugs that that security researchers have pinpointed and warned against, as those could be the gateway for hackers to actually gain remote control of machines.
Over in New Jersey, District Judge William Martini has come up with a ruling that the police are not required to actually pick up a warrant before opening a fake Instagram account. This is because the bogus account could actually be used to receive pictures shared by a suspect, and some folks wonder whether this would require a search warrant to be issued beforehand. Not so, according to Judge Martini in his ruling that stated whenever Instagram users post photos on the site, they happen to be practicing “consensual sharing.”
In other words, users who put up photos on Instagram are more or less in the know that should they “follow” or “friend” others, they will also end up sharing their pictures with them. All in all, one should always be extra careful with whatever one shares with others online, as you can never quite tell how something might end up to bit you in the rear some day down the road.
Both iOS and Android number close to a million apps each on their respective app stores, which is one of the reasons why smartphone users flock to either operating system. Of course there are other factors, such as hardware, pricing, availability and so on, but it is safe to say that app availability plays a big role as well. Well Blackberry seems to think so as well as they have revealed that the Blackberry World app store currently sits at about 120,000 apps, which while still pretty small compared to iOS and Android, is a pretty huge deal considering that the platform and its accompanying devices were only launched earlier this year! Blackberry’s CEO Thorsten Heins praised the thriving ecosystem, which we guess was boosted by Blackberry’s efforts where they held events to encourage developers to submit as many apps as they can, and even offering monetary rewards on top of earnings for every app successfully submitted to Blackberry World. We can see that Blackberry is going for quantity at the moment, and we suppose there are quality apps within those 120,000, but for now it looks like as far as apps are concerned, they may very well be edging Windows Phone out of the picture!