Apps: Features

Size (and mobility) matters. As desktop PCs lose ground to tablets and smartphones, and the Cloud becomes a more mainstream means for software deployment, desktop applications are being elbowed aside by mobile apps and Web services, resulting in a significant shift in the way software is created.

Kindergarten rules for living well can get you in trouble in the corporate world. Now, there is an app for business complications of the worst type.

Despite competition from no lesser a giant than Apple, Amazon's Kindle for iOS app is still the best e-reading option in the App Store.

A variety of tools and services can help you keep track of all the stuff you need to take care of in your life. Here, we present the best to-do apps and services for the Android user who has way too many things to do.

As we’ve become a more mobile society - working from virtually anywhere on our smartphones and tablets - we’ve also embraced various cloud storage and file sharing tools, so we can access and collaborate on our data. Younity has an entirely different approach, and it could make cloud storage obsolete.

Siri is, by far, my favorite recent addition to iOS. In an age when electronic devices keep getting smaller, faster, and thinner, the humble keyboard feels increasingly like a relic of a bygone era - an era when computers were designed to occupy entire rooms instead of the palm of a hand.

Google shook things up last week when it dusted off its old Notebook service and relaunched it as Keep. Google's new software muscles in on the space currently dominated by Microsoft OneNote and Evernote, two note-taking apps that save your text, Web links, photos, audio recordings, and more, helping to keep your life organized.

Facebook users are constantly being told that their privacy is under siege. Here are seven apps that can help secure your personal data.

Mobile transportation apps like Hailo and others have forced traditional taxi companies to pull a strategic u-turn. Here's the story of how 60-year-old Radio Taxis Group of London has gone digital and mobile to catch up to Hailo's disruptive powers.

Over the next few years, almost every app we use and every website we visit may function less like a machine and more like a person helping us to do our work and live our lives.

Telstra has launched a new National Rugby League (NRL) app for iOS and Android smartphones, just in time for the kickoff of the 2013 season. The highlight of the app is a subscription video service that allows users to watch live rugby league games but there are some annoying caveats for Android users.

Tablets, led by the iPad, have the potential to shake up the comic-book industry even more than ebook readers have begun to change the world of prose books.

Whenever talk turns to the comparatively low number of apps available in the Windows Store, commenters invariably take the article to task. "Quantity isn't as important as quality!" they type, frequently tossing in an ALL CAPS EXPLETIVE or three. "Who wants 100,000 fart apps anyway?"

Despite persistent claims to the contrary, the album isn't dead -- yet. Adele has sold more than 25 million copies of her second full-length recording, 21, since it was released in January 2011, while back in September, hoedown-loving folksters Mumford & Sons shifted some 600,000 units of their second record, Babel, in its first week.

Rumors have been floating around for some time that Microsoft is hard at work developing Microsoft Office apps for iOS--or more specifically for the Apple iPad. Speculation about Office for iOS has grown following the launch of Office 2013 and the new Office 365, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer appears to have squashed that dream for the time being.

George and Judy Jetson would feel right at home at the CES floor here. With smart washing machines, magic remotes, and refrigerators that blast Top 40 hits, the automated home has arrived.

The first time you boot up your shiny new Windows 8 tablet and witness Microsoft's live tiles in all their constantly shifting, multi-hued glory, it's only natural to want to dive into the Windows Store and try a few apps out for yourself. Just one problem, though: There are tens of thousands of Windows 8 apps available, and Microsoft doesn't do a great job of directing people to the cream of the crop.

If you were lucky enough to receive a new iPad for the holidays this year, we hope you have fun exploring what the tablet has to offer. By now you've probably acquainted yourself with the built-in apps on your iPad, so you may want to reach outside the sandbox for more interesting fare. The App Store, which you can access on your iPad or via iTunes on your computer, features more than 750,000 downloadable apps. If there's something you want to do on your iPad, chances are good you can find a tool for it in the App Store. But separating the truly great apps from the weird and wacky ones can be tough. Here are a few of our favorite apps to get you started.

Despite its aesthetic achievements, Apple's Maps app in iOS 6 left a lot of users unhappy. Turns out that the years Google spent building out its mapping data were hugely important; Apple's data - which powered its new Maps app - didn't have the real world, real user testing that Google Maps benefited from.

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the first Web browser in 1990, it was just an application made to read HTML pages passively. Fast-forward to today, and the modern Web browser has become a powerful platform in itself—almost a miniature operating system, capable of running complex JavaScript code and interacting with Flash plug-ins.