All Info You Need About An IPHONE

Tuesday

TURN YOUR IPHONE INTO A CONTROLLER FOR FLASH GAMES!

Your Android device or iPhone can be a wireless controller for awesomely addictive games.

WanderPlayer is the name given to a set of apps that you install on your computer and also your mobile device. These pieces of software work together to allow communication and create a gaming controller. The app is free and works for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.

Step 1: Head over to www.wanderplayer.com in your browser of choice. Click on the Download button on the right side of the window (Mac users can click "Not using Windows" to see a Mac download option).

Step 2: Once the first download is started, options to download the mobile version for Android or iPhone will appear. Click the button for your mobile platform and follow the instructions to download.

Step 3: Once both versions are installed, run the app on your PC or Mac.

Step 4: With the program running on your computer, run the app on your mobile device. Enter your e-mail address and name. This is only for feedback purposes but is recommended to help the developer improve the app.

Step 5: Under the More tab at the bottom of the screen (Android version), click on Consoles and select your computer from the list. Consoles can be selected in the Consoles tab on the iPhone version.

Step 6: To play a game, select the Play tab in the mobile version and select the game from the list.

Step 7: The game will launch in you computer's browser and you will be able to control it using the buttons that appear on your mobile device. Happy gaming! As of right now, there are a limited number of Flash games compatible with the controller. This is sure to change as the app receives updates, so give it a look and enjoy. CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW TO CREATE PROFESSIONAL VIDEOS WITH YOUR IPHONES

HOW TO SEND LARGE BATCHES OF PHOTOS FROM YOUR IOS DEVICE - by Rick Broida

Free app Kicksend (now available for Android as well) overcomes the five-photo limit, letting you send up to 30 at a time. It's part Instagram, part Dropbox.

Fire up Kicksend. This free app lets you send big batches of photos, plus documents or video, to an individual or group. Update: Talk about timing -- Kicksend was just unveiled for Android. Looks to be quite similar in terms of features and operations. Kicksend looks and operates a lot like Instagram, just without the fancy filters. After registering for an account (also free), you simply tap the camera button to take a photo or video, or choose some from your existing library. The latter option lets you select one video or up to 30 photos. From there you get the option of e-mailing them to one or more recipients. Although Kicksend will pull up e-mail addresses from your address book as you type them, it curiously lacks the option to open your contacts list. (You can, however, build lists of recipients, which is crazy-handy for quick-sending to groups like family members and work friends.) What happens next is more akin to Dropbox: the app uploads your media to its own servers, then sends your recipient(s) an e-mail with a link for viewing, downloading, or commenting on them. At the same time, Kicksend adds the media to your account, which can be viewed in the app, Instagram-style. And as you add friends, their Kicksend photos and videos appear in your inbox as well. It's not immediately obvious how to send files or documents from other apps, but the answer lies in choosing "Open with" and then selecting Kicksend. The only hassle is that, by default, recipients will have to sign up for a Kicksend account in order to view your stuff. However, you can eliminate this requirement by turning off the "Extra Privacy" feature for each batch of files you send. For whatever reason, the app doesn't have a more permanent "off" option in its settings. It may not be perfect, but Kicksend offers a quick and painless way to share lots of photos with friends and family members. CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW TO CREATE IPHONE VIDEOS FREE OF CHARGE

THE WORST APP APPLE EVER MADE - Rick Broida

Apple does a lot of things right, but this app is such a huge misfire, it rates only 1.5 stars in the App Store. Fortunately, there are some great alternatives. Podcasts are all kinds of awesome. A Prairie Home Companion, This American Life, Wiretap, The Truth -- there's a virtually endless supply of great listening to be had free of charge.

Apple's Podcasts app, on the other hand, is all kinds of suck. It's so abysmal that I'm breaking my if-you-can't-say-anything-nice rule to vent my hatred of it. Ever since it debuted last June, I've tried to put up with it, tried to work around its countless limitations and atrocious interface. But no more. I'm done. What's the problem with Podcasts? Ye gods, where do I start? Maybe with its very existence: Apple pried podcast listening out of the Music app instead of giving users a choice in the matter. What used to be easy -- tap the Music icon that lives, omnipresently, in my bottom row, then tap Podcasts -- now requires me to hunt for a separate app. Plus, I can no longer navigate or listen to podcasts using my car's audio controls. Oh, and playlists? Nuh-uh. I realize podcasts aren't music, but I sure did like having them under that same roof. To my thinking, Apple tried to fix something that wasn't broken. The new Podcasts app consists of three sections -- Podcasts, Top Stations, and Store -- that each have radically different interfaces. The Store, at least, looks just like the regular iTunes store, so at least there's some familiarity there. But Top Stations employs a weird horizontal dial that scrolls you through the various categories -- assuming your finger doesn't get in the way of their names, which it often does. But it's the Podcasts section of Podcasts that's the real problem. When you're actually listening to a program, there's no progress meter, no scrubber; all you see is an oversize show placard. If you tap it, it raises to reveal...an old-fashioned reel-to-reel tape machine with spools that turn while you listen. Uh, what? I mean, it looks neat, I guess, but it's utterly pointless. A progress meter/scrubber appears below that, but it's so tiny as to be impractical. And the share, playback speed, and sleep-timer buttons that also appear on this "tape deck" are inexplicably dark and hard to read. Semantics, right? So the player interface is a little goofy. I could live with that, but I can't live with this: Podcasts frequently forgets where you left off. Let's say I listen to the first half of an episode of This American Life. The next day, I load up Podcasts again, but there's no resume option, no Now Playing button that immediately returns me to the program I'd been listening to. (Actually, that button does appear if you restart Podcasts soon after quitting, but let a day go by and it's gone.) So first I have to remember what show it was (you try being 44 and see how well you remember things), then remember which episode it was. If I guess right on both counts, Podcasts picks up where I left off. But up till then, it's all guesswork. That's ridiculous beyond belief. I'm not alone in hating Podcasts: Nearly 4,000 reviewers in the App Store rated it 1.5 stars on average. That's a pretty blistering indictment; even Find My Friends, another Apple app that's taken its share of lumps, rates three stars. The good news is that unlike, say, Game Center and Weather, Podcasts can be deleted. The App Store is home to countless alternatives that offer a vastly superior podcast listening and management experience, including perennial favorite Downcast, beloved freebie Stitcher Radio, and top-rated iCatcher. Those are my feelings on the subject; now let's hear yours. Do you detest Apple's Podcasts as much as I do? If so, what app have you replaced it with?

EDIT AND SHARE PHOTOS WITH IPHONE APP PicsArt - Matt Elliott

Long-time favorite for Android, PicsArt Photo Studio comes to the iPhone, bringing with it a host of editing tools and its own photo-sharing network. PicsArt has been a favorite photo-editing and -sharing app for Android, and now it's available for the iPhone. This free app provides an impressive array of editing tools, including collage and drawing functions, along with its own photo-sharing network.

The app's home screen provides a colorful mix of six buttons: Effect, Collage, Draw, Camera, Edit, and Shop. You can also swipe left to view your profile and swipe right to view PicsArt's feed of what it deems interesting photos (think Instagram's Popular feed). You can use the app without creating an account, but with an account, you can create your own PicsArt feed and follow other PicsArt users and have them follow you. You can sign up via Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail. You can edit a photo by either snapping a shot with the app or selecting a photo from your Camera Roll or a handful of online sources (which we'll get to in a minute). When you snap or select a photo to edit, you'll see five edit buttons along the bottom: Tools, Effects, Draw, Masks, and Add. The Tools button lets you adjust the colors (brightness, contrast, saturation, and hue) of the image along with providing rotate, crop, and resize tools. The Effects button offers dozens of filters organized into five categories. For many of the filters, you can use sliders to tweak the effect. Also, more Effects are available via the Shop button on the home screen, and all of the filter packs in the shop when I visited were free. The Draw and Mask buttons both offer impressive control, while the Add button lets you add clipart, borders, and text.

CNET How To Edit and share photos with iPhone app PicsArt Edit and share photos with iPhone app PicsArt Long-time favorite for Android, PicsArt Photo Studio comes to the iPhone, bringing with it a host of editing tools and its own photo-sharing network. Matt Elliott by Matt Elliott January 8, 2013 11:30 AM PST PicsArt has been a favorite photo-editing and -sharing app for Android, and now it's available for the iPhone. This free app provides an impressive array of editing tools, including collage and drawing functions, along with its own photo-sharing network. (Credit: Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET) The app's home screen provides a colorful mix of six buttons: Effect, Collage, Draw, Camera, Edit, and Shop. You can also swipe left to view your profile and swipe right to view PicsArt's feed of what it deems interesting photos (think Instagram's Popular feed). You can use the app without creating an account, but with an account, you can create your own PicsArt feed and follow other PicsArt users and have them follow you. You can sign up via Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail. You can edit a photo by either snapping a shot with the app or selecting a photo from your Camera Roll or a handful of online sources (which we'll get to in a minute). When you snap or select a photo to edit, you'll see five edit buttons along the bottom: Tools, Effects, Draw, Masks, and Add. The Tools button lets you adjust the colors (brightness, contrast, saturation, and hue) of the image along with providing rotate, crop, and resize tools. The Effects button offers dozens of filters organized into five categories. For many of the filters, you can use sliders to tweak the effect. Also, more Effects are available via the Shop button on the home screen, and all of the filter packs in the shop when I visited were free. The Draw and Mask buttons both offer impressive control, while the Add button lets you add clipart, borders, and text. (Credit: Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET) When you have your photo just right, you can use the save button in the middle of the top row of buttons to save the image to your phone's Camera Roll. You can also use the triangular-looking button just to its right to export the photo to PicsArt's own network or to Facebook, Twitter, or Dropbox.

Quickly, let's touch on the other buttons on the home screen. The Collage feature works well, offering a wide variety of layouts. It lets you switch photos after loading them into the template, and tapping and holding on a photo in a template lets you edit or reposition it. With the Draw tool, you can draw on a photo or on a blank slate. Lastly, the Effect button provides only PicsArt's various effects (i.e. filters), stripping out the rest of the editing tools if you are a seasoned Instagrammer and want to slap a quick filter on a photo and move on.

One odd thing I noticed about the app has to do with importing photos from a few online sources. You can select photos from your Camera Roll, your PicsArt feed, your Dropbox account, or your Facebook profile as you might expect. There are, however, three other options: Flickr, Picasa, and Google Images. For these three, you can import only random images; there is no way to log into your Google or Flickr account, at least that I can see. Even if you don't end up using PicsArt's own photo-sharing network, the app is useful for the impressive array of editing tools and control it provides. And for free.

FINALLY, THE IPHONE WE HAVE ALWAYS WANTED!

The good: The iPhone 5 adds everything we wanted in the iPhone 4S: 4G LTE, a longer, larger screen, free turn-by-turn navigation, and a faster A6 processor. Plus, its top-to-bottom redesign is sharp, slim, and feather-light. The bad: Apple Maps feels unfinished and buggy; Sprint and Verizon models can't use voice and data simultaneously. The smaller connector renders current accessories unusable without an adapter. There's no NFC, and the screen size pales in comparison to jumbo Android models. The bottom line: The iPhone 5 completely rebuilds the iPhone on a framework of new features and design, addressing its major previous shortcomings. It's absolutely the best iPhone to date, and it easily secures its place in the top tier of the smartphone universe. The iPhone 5 is the iPhone we've wanted since 2010, adding long-overdue upgrades like a larger screen and faster 4G LTE in a razor-sharp new design. This is the iPhone, rebooted. The new design is flat-out lovely, both to look at and to hold, and it's hard to find a single part that hasn't been tweaked from the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 5 is at once completely rebuilt and completely familiar. I've had the chance to use the iPhone 5 for nearly a week, and have been using it for nearly anything I can think of. Is it as futuristic or as exciting as the iPhone 4 or the original iPhone? No. Does this change the smartphone game? No. Other smartphones beat it on features here and there: if you want a larger screen, go with a Samsung Galaxy S3. If you want better battery life, go with a Droid Razr Maxx.