Riffsy For iOS : Explore and Share Video Clips

Riffsy is a multilayered service for creating, sharing and discovering very short clips of 5-10 seconds in length. You can personalize the clips with captions like you might see in an animated GIF, which is essentially what the clips are.

The first part of the service, creating the clip or ‘riff’ as it’s known in the world of Riffsy, takes place in a browser on Riffsy’s site. You browse to a URL of a video already on a site like YouTube, Hulu, etc. and then use Riffsy’s interface to select clips from it to generate each riff. You can have up to four clips in a set and once you’ve created them, you can overlay captions to supplement it. You can’t yet create riffs from inside the iOS app, though you can use any video you’ve already uploaded to YouTube to create riffs from your own personal videos.

The rest is handled by the iOS app which makes discovering and sharing fun riffs quick and easy. There are millions of GIFs to explore with popular or noteworthy ones available to browse and of course you can also search for a particular topic. You can save your favorite clips or collections and follow other users. Each riff also links back to the original source video which is a great way to hook people into watching the whole thing. Riffs can be embedded with Facebook or you can share them on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Google+. If you e-mail or text a riff, it automatically converts it to an animated GIF so it’s visible on that platform which is a great little trick. You can use tons of custom GIFs in messenger or texting apps to spice them up.

Riffsy is available now free for all iOS devices. For fans of the ultra short video clip craze, Riffsy is an amazing way to create your own shareable riffs or reference a popular movie or show.

Source: Riffsy for iPhone

[Image Credit: Apple iTunes Store]

Facebook Photo Downloader For Android

Facebook is home to millions if not billions of photos, some of which are worth saving. The official Facebook app doesn’t allow you to directly save photos from other users, even if their photos are accessible. It’s led to many people resorting to taking screenshots of the photo they want, but this is cumbersome and results in a lower resolution or poorly framed copy. With Facebook Photo Downloader, if you can view it, you can download it in its full glory to your device for later viewing. As long as the user has made the photo public or given you access, you’ll be able to download it and save it permanently.

Facebook Photo Downloader works more like a plugin for the official Facebook app rather than a dedicated app. Once you’ve installed it, you can access ‘1ClickSave’ from the Share menu inside the Facebook app. You simply open the official Android Facebook app, navigate to the photo you’d like to save, tap Share, then ‘1ClickSave’, and the photo you’re viewing will be saved to a folder named Facebook Pics. That’s really all there is to it. The photos can then be opened in any photo app from the convenient folder. A small annoyance is that each photo must be individually downloaded and there is no option to download an entire album. There are few cases where you’d need the whole album but it would be a nice feature to have just in case. The best thing about it is that everything is done directly from the Facebook app so you don’t even notice that the downloader is there and you don’t have to exit to download.

Facebook Photo Downloader is a very lightweight and helpful plugin for the Facebook app. It’s available free on Google Play and definitely worth a try if you want to keep a full copy of a photo you find on Facebook.

[Image Credit: Google Play Store]

The 5 Best Android Apps For Twitter Users

The marketplace is crowded with Twitter apps from clients to apps that complement the Twitter experience. It can be hard to find a real diamond in the rough among them, but here are five of the very best out there. Even better, they’re all free.

twicca

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This is one of the premiere Twitter clients and has too many features to name. If you can think of something you’d want to do with Twitter, it’s almost assured that twicca can do it. The interface is very light and you can choose to highlight accounts you’ve subscribed to with different colors to make reading easier. It also has an experimental feature for multiple accounts which is very convenient.

Buffer

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With Buffer, you can schedule automatically spaced posts on Twitter and Facebook of content that you like. It’s integrated with all of the major reader apps like Instapaper, Evernote, Zite, etc. and you simply add a story to your ‘Buffer’ where it will be tweeted or posted to Facebook. It also features Twitter analytics so you can see how popular your posts are or who’s been reading them.

Tweets Nearby

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In case you couldn’t guess, Tweets Nearby is an app to view nearby tweets. The app shows tweets in real time from users within walking distance of you that can be viewed on a map. You can then interact with any of these users by tweeting them, texting, or just reading their tweets. It’s a fun way to see what’s going on around your area and potentially meeting some new friends.

Unfollowers.me

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This app is a fantastic Twitter manager. If you’ve ever found yourself with many followers and no good way to organize them, Unfollowers.me is the answer. You can view who recently followed/unfollowed you, who chose to follow you back, compare and search users, and more. The lists of who you follow and who follows you, whitelists, and blocked users are there as well as the core Twitter actions like following or blocking users.

The Social Radio for Twitter

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The Social Radio for Twitter turns your Twitter feed into a live radio broadcast that reads your incoming tweets and plays your personal music in the background. It’s a clever idea and a fun way to consume your Twitter feed while occupied with something else. Besides reading your own tweets, it can mix in trending topics, hashtags, and more to enrich the experience. The app auto-detects what language the tweets are in and adjusts on the fly to read it to you correctly. It can even read some common emoticons and text abbreviations.

5 Great Android Games For Summer

Summer is a great time to kick back and enjoy life with a little playtime. Try these five fantastic games for Android to help you get into the summer groove.

Crazy Taxi

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This classic from SEGA arrives for Android devices and features the same crazy driving antics as the original as you race to help cabby fares. This edition has some new modes, music, and tweaks to gameplay to make it more mobile friendly, though you can still play Classic mode. From veteran fans of the Dreamcast version to newcomers, this is an experience you shouldn’t miss.

Tiny Thief

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In Tiny Thief, you must help a mischievous thief take treasures and avoid perilous settings and cunning foes. It’s a point-and-click adventure with dozens of puzzles and easter egg style secrets to find. The graphics and art are beautifully done too, ranging from castles and dungeons to pirate ships.

Sprinkle Islands

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Sprinkle is a heroic little firetruck that bravely puts out fires that plague some peaceful tropical islands. You’ll travel to four different islands and use Sprinkle’s unique water cannon to solve a series of fluid physics based puzzles. The graphics are cheery and colorful and the puzzles are fun too.

Pacific Rim

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To match the blockbuster movie of the summer, Pacific Rim lets you take the helm of the mighty robot warrior Jaegars to battle dozens of fierce monsters known as Kaiju. Choose from five upgradeable Jaegars and take on Story or Survival modes to save the planet from destruction.

Turd Birds

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Anyone who’s ever been hit by some rude bird droppings might want to see how it feels from the other end. In Turd Birds, you’ll get the second best thing as you take control of some silly birds as they hunt for unsuspecting targets below. You must avoid aerial obstacles like helicopters, toxic fumes, and UFOs as you aim to drop a precision bird turd. You can even link your Facebook and the targets become photos from your friends!

Apalon Releases ‘Pimp Your Screen’ App for Android

Pimp Your Screen is a collection of wallpapers and widgets to help you personalize your Android device. With the provided wallpapers, you can change your device to suit your style. The widgets make it easy to get a quick info update or control some of the basic device settings.

Pimp Your Screen comes with two separate sections : wallpapers and widgets. There are six wallpaper categories to choose from including Abstract, Cartoon, Holidays, Sci-Fi, Sports and Nature. Each category has about a dozen wallpapers to choose from so there is probably something to fit your style. The app promises to have periodic updates with new wallpapers too, which adds some value to the app. You can also sort the wallpapers by their popularity or find the most recent new releases. The wallpapers can be set to change at a specified time and can also be set from within the app, both convenient features.

The widgets on offer complement the feel of the rest of the app. Many of them are bright and just a little obnoxious but they should be if you really want to ‘pimp’ your device. The widgets range from battery, weather, and clock widgets to simple toggle switches for commonly used settings like WiFi, brightness, rotation, etc. Pimp Your Screen only shows a simple image for each widget, so you’ll have to try each one out to see if you actually like it. Like any widget, they can either be distracting and get in the way, or they can be a great way to bring some life to your home screen. It’s all a matter of personal preference.

Pimp Your Screen is available now on Google Play for $0.99. It’s a solid wallpaper and widget collection.

[Image Credit: Google Play Store]

BullGuard Virus Scan : Free Cloud-Based AntiVirus

BullGuard is a computer security firm with a reputation for good malware detection. In a field dominated by big names like Symantec and McAfee, you might not have heard of BullGuard, but they’re hoping to change that with a new online scanning tool. The company has created a plugin for all major browsers that can run a system scan to detect viruses, malware, and spyware quickly and accurately. This differs from most other antivirus offerings that typically run in a dedicated application that must be downloaded and updated continuously. BullGuard’s cloud based strategy makes it easier for users to avoid conflicts with other antivirus programs and be freed from the hassle of constant virus definition updates.

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BullGuard’s site offers a download of the free plugin which also installs a small toolbar addition to your browser. Clicking the button runs a scan of your computer and it is very fast. During the scan, a progress bar appears indicating the number of files left to scan. After the scan is complete, a diagnostic log is also available that summarizes the results for future records. The free version only detects threats and does not remove them. For that, you will need to purchase the full edition or you can remove the infected files with another antivirus program.

BullGuard hopes to attract newer users who are more familiar with cloud-based services. With users increasingly turning to browsers and cloud services for their needs, putting an antivirus suite in the cloud is a smart move. The toolbar button makes it a simple matter to run a scan instead of dealing with a separate application. The plugin is a simple download away at BullGuard’s site. If you’re curious about cloud-based antivirus, it’s worth a try.

Source: Visit BullGuard Virus Scan