Hands on: Falcon Pro swoops in as a legitimate Twitter client

There are so many Twitter clients available that it's hard to tell which is right for you without playing with them all. We're going to tell you up front that Falcon Pro makes a strong case to be your primary Twitter app. Here's why.

We’re pretty sure at least 50 percent of the hundreds of thousands of apps in the Google Play Store are Twitter clients. There are so many choices to handle your 140 characters, from Twitter’s official offering to the plethora of third party developers that promise improvements to the social experience. Falcon Pro is the new kid on the block and, although it’s a little late to the game, it does it’s best to make a strong case to be a go-to for Tweeters.

From the very start, it’s clear that Falcon Pro is sleek. Once you’ve logged in to your account the first time, you’re greeted with your feed of tweets from accounts you follow. Using a fairly dark color palate that features a gray background that allow the white text to pop, the focus is right on the content that is coming through your feed. Having the name listed above the tweet with an accenting dark gray bar around it makes it easy to see the user and access their page if you’d like. Links and account handles are in a teal-ish blue that looks nice within the theme as well. The settings menu has a Display option that promises theme and color changes and while that doesn’t appear available yet, there’s really no reason to change what works.

Above the feed are three icons with counters next to them. The numbers next to the icons represent your unread tweets, mentions, and direct messages. If you get a lot of any of these the numbers become fairly meaningless, especially if you follow a lot of accounts. Regardless, seeing the number tick down as you pass by each tweet is nice. It’s a little like checking your email inbox except far less burdensome. There’s no lag or slowdown in the scroll, so you can blaze through tweets at a fast pace and the countdown keeps up. Even flipping your device to go landscape layout instead of portrait loads rather quickly, though there is this creepy subliminal flash of the Falcon Pro logo that occurs every time you do it.

Moving outside of the feed occurs when you tap on a tweet with a link or touch on a Twitter profile. When you go to view a tweet with a link, it takes you to a new page in the app with the original tweet displayed above and the content of the link available in a web browser box below. There’s no leaving the app, which is nice but can also be disabled if you prefer. Replies and other interactions with the tweet are also displayed clearly but unobtrusively. Profile pages are themed similarly to the news feed and looks as good as you expect, with a stream of the user’s tweets scrollable below. It’s intuitive and simple in areas where lots of Twitter clients manage to fall short.

Checking on your personal Twitter setup is just a swipe a way from the feed. A swipe to the left gives access to all of your account basics. A listing of how many followers you’ve accrued and users you follow is listed below your account handle and image. Under that gives you access to your timeline, mentions and direct messages, just like the icons above your normal stream. You can only sync a single account with Falcon Pro at the moment, so you’ll only see this information for your primary account. Also housed on this side menu, though, are your favorites, the search function, and the settings.

If you’re one to tinker and tweak the way your app works, Falcon Pro does it’s best to allow for it. You can change your refresh rate – which defaults to every 30 minutes – so your tweets come in faster. If you’d prefer to just get the information while tapped in to a Wi-Fi connection, you can. Notifications are also customizable, allowing you to be notified when you are mentioned or receive a message. As mentioned before, the internal browser is optional, as is a TweetMarker that will hold your position on your feed across devices so you’ll maintain your spot no matter where you view from. If you’re a Twitter addict, you can let Falcon Pro keep you in touch with tweets at all times. If you’re more of a battery-conscious consumer of tweets, it can accommodate for that, too.

Swinging over to the right of the stream displays a couple more features. Your lists, saved searches, and trending hashtags are all visible on this side. These are all easily explorable with a tap so you can see what the folks in your lists are up to or check out what people around the world are saying about specific topics. Doing so brings up a scrollable feed that looks just like the standard one so navigation is simple.

Then there’s that whole actually tweeting thing. That’s probably important to you if you’re looking for a solid Twitter client. Composing a new tweet is done with a talk bubble icon on the righthand side of the menu bar above your main feed. It’s almost always present no matter where you go in the app so if someone catches your attention and you need to share your thoughts immediately, it’s right there for you. Users can also easily attach a photo from their phone’s gallery, take a new picture to go along with a tweet, and add their location with a quick tap of the icons under the new tweet’s text box. It’s all right within reach and easy to do.

For a relatively small price tag of $1, Falcon Pro sure does a lot. (There is a weird “donate” option in the settings where you can pay another $2 for a widget, but you can pretty much ignore that if you want.) While it would be great to see support for extra account and some color and themes added in as the Settings page promises, those are pretty small complaints compared to all the good you get for a buck. Falcon Pro is definitely worth handing your Twitter interactions over to.


Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Nintendo turns your iPhone or iPad into a Pokedex

One of Nintendo's biggest franchises is Pokemon. While Nintendo isn't letting its IP go to the new mobile platforms yet, The Pokemon Company has brought its full Pokedex to iOS devices - for a price.

Nintendo guards its intellectual properties closely. It doesn’t just hand out the rights to its beloved games all willy nilly. Know what happened the few times it did? Super Mario Bros the movie and the Legend of Zelda CD-i games. As such, it isn’t too surprising that the gaming giant has shown reluctance to embrace mobile platforms not branded with its own name. But today, a wild app appeared in the iTunes App Store, and it’s likely to be super effective in attracting Pokémon fanatics. The Pokédex is officially available on iOS today.

Developed by Nintendo subsidiary The Pokémon Company, the Pokédex app is an interactive listing of over 640 pocket monsters that exist inside the Pokémon universe. Taking advantage of the Retina display on Apple devices, the app gives prospective Pokémon trainers a look at their creatures in high definition. Search through the extensive list of creatures using custom conditions like skills or type to find the exact Pokémon you are after. Detailed information about each Pokémon, from height and evolutions to abilities and locations, are all available in the app.

It’s worth noting that the app only comes with Pokémon in the Unova region, covered in Pokémon Black and White versions 1 and 2. If you’d like access to all 640 pocket monsters on your Pokédex app, you’ll have to fork over a bit of cash. The app itself costs $2 and each region of Pokémon, four in total, costs an additional $6. So to really catch ‘em all, you’ll be dropping around $26. That’s a pricey commitment to an app that just houses information about made up animals in a game that you have to play on another device. To each their own, though. We’re not here to judge you, fanboys.

You can download the Pokédex app in the iTunes App Store for $2.


Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Pantech Vega Joining the 1080p Smartphone Club

When HTC announced the J Butterfly for the Japanese market, a new chapter smartphone technology was revealed. The age of full HD displays on smartphones is now starting to heat up, with Sony and others all working on entries of their own. In China, there is also the Oppo Find 5, which is expected to arrive in the United States in unlocked form. And now Pantech is joining the club as well.

The Pantech Vega IM-A860S and A860L are heading to South Korea and appear to be the same phone, just different variants for different carriers.

The Vega IM-A860 is a flagship device and is said to have a formal launch just around the corner. Not much is known about the rest of the specs here, but odds are that it will likely have quad-core power to go along with the impressive display. It also very likely has a 5-inch display.

So when will a formal announcement arrive? CES 2013 seems like as good of bet as any. If Pantech eventually brought a full HD phone to your local area would you consider it or not?



Source : mobilemag[dot]com

Samsung teases 7 more Galaxy S3 Premium Suite features

Samsung teases 7 more Galaxy S3 Premium Suite features

You big tease

After revealing Premium Suite features included in the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update for the Galaxy Note 10.1 late last month, Samsung is now giving a peek at what Galaxy S3 owners can expect when their update finally arrives.

On Monday, the Samsung Tomorrow blog posted part two of its video detailing an additional seven features coming soon with its Premium Suite upgrade for the company's SIII.

The first video posted last week offered a look at half of the features coming soon to Samsung's flagship smartphone, including multi-window views, Page Buddy, Contextual Menu and Facebook Lock Ticker.

In total, the Premium Suite upgrade for the Galaxy SIII will introduce 14 major new features as well as bug fixes and other improvements.

What's coming

With part two, Samsung primarily focused on Paper Artist for spicing up images, Low Light Shot for taking pictures in dark places and Best Face, which uses content from five different shots to create a single, blink-free photo.

Accessibility options such as Easy Mode will make transitioning from a feature phone to a smartphone painless for novices, while Sound Balance allows users to favor one audio channel over another when using earphones.

Samsung made it clear that availability and timing of the Premium Suite upgrade varies by country and mobile carrier so for now, owners will have to exercise patience until their turn arrives.

Check out part two below:


Source : techradar[dot]com

Ada Lovelace, first computer programmer, celebrated in Google Doodle

Today’s re-imagining of the Google logo pays tribute to Ada Lovelace, a 19th-century mathematician whom many consider the world’s first programmer.

If you head over to Google today, you’ll see a image paying tribute to Ada Lovelace, whose work with Charles Babbage in the 1840s made her an early legend of computing history. The drawing depicts Lovelace writing equations with a quill, along with early versions of what would evolve to become the modern computer. Google’s official blog notes that it hopes that “today’s doodle inspires people to find out more about Ada, and about the contributions made by women in general to science and technology.” So just who was Ada Lovelace, and what made her remarkable?

According to her timeline, Ada Lovelace was born Augusta Ada Byron, the Countess of Lovelace. As the daughter and only legitimate child of Lord Byron, a famed Romantic poet, Lovelace had an unusual upbringing. Her mother delegated most childrearing duties to Lovelace’s grandmother, yet insisted that Lovelace be educated in science, logic, and mathematics, in part because she was afraid that Lovelace would otherwise inherit Lord Byron’s poetic madness.

Lovelace flourished in her pursuit of mathematics, and one of her mentors introduced her to Charles Babbage. Babbage, another English mathematician, was trying to design what he called an “Analytical Engine,” or a kind of early mechanical computer. Babbage was struck by Lovelace’s skill, dubbing her “The Enchantress of Numbers.”

With Babbage’s encouragement, Lovelace translated and expanded an Italian article about the Analytical Engine. Her additions included a method for using the engine to calculate Bernoulli numbers, which many consider the first computer algorithm, making Lovelace not only the first female programmer but also the first computer programmer of any kind. Even more astonishingly, Lovelace’s creative, abstract approach helped her imagine a future in which the Analytical Engine could manipulate other types of symbols in addition to numbers – creating digital music, calculating betting odds, or producing graphic designs.

Like many visionaries, Lovelace died before her time; uterine cancer claimed her at only 36. However, she also fell victim to the obscurity that often claims early female intellectuals. Ada Lovelace Day, celebrated on October 16, helps draw attention to Lovelace and other remarkable women in STEM fields. Head over to Finding Ada to learn more about Lovelace’s impressive life.


Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

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