If you find yourself at an event -- party, wedding, huge snow storm -- with a bunch of iPhone-wielding friends, Albumatic will let you create a social photo album. Granted, as The Verge points out, it's probably easier to use Instagram and an agreed-upon hashtag to share photos, with the added benefit of including the Android users in your midst. Whether Albumatic finds an audience is a question that remains to be answered, but the app itself is slick. And free and ad-free.

Launch Albumatic for the first time and you'll need to create an account via e-mail … Read more

If you own an Android tablet, or just a phone with a huge screen, watching YouTube videos while you perform other tasks can be superconvenient. Perhaps you're checking e-mail and watching videos from your favorite band, or maybe you're watching a scene from a play and following along in the script. This split-screen feature is available on the Samsung Galaxy Note II, but hasn't rolled out to many other handsets. Ready to add more multitasking power to your device?

First you'll need to install a copy of Floating YouTube Popup Video on your Android device, then … Read more

A relatively minor update for the Nexus line of devices, Android 4.2.2, was released last week by Google. The update, which included various performance improvements, also included a change to the behavior of the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi tiles in Quick Settings.

To access Quick Settings, you simply swipe down from the top of your screen with two fingers. You'll see various tiles, all allowing you to quickly access their respective settings screen. New in the 4.2.2 update is the ability to long-press on the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth icons, toggling the state of the service.

It'… Read more

NoCrop is not an app you will want to use with any regularity. The barrage of ads is unyielding, but this free and universal iOS app is useful for those times when Instagram's framing constraint doesn't mesh with the composition of a rectangular photo on your phone.

For such instances, NoCrop lets you share the entire rectangular frame on Instagram. It pulls off this feat by adding a white border on either side of portrait-oriented photos or on the top and bottom of landscapes.

When you first launch the app, you'll need to allow it access to … Read more

In the older version of Any.Do you had to schedule each task on your list individually. While this was effective in the sense that it set off notifications, it wasn't efficient. Luckily, the new Any.Do Moment feature creates a path between listing your tasks and getting things done by helping you plan out your day.

Before you get started, make sure you have the latest version of Any.Do installed on your device. You'll probably see an update, but if not, head to Google Play and grab the latest version.

Once you open Any.Do on … Read more

The biggest issue with any of the activity tracking systems, be it a Fitbit or Jawbone Up, is that some information has to be manually entered by the user. For example, when I'm tracking how much water I drink in a given day, I have to remember to enter it into the Fitbit app, and I'm horrible at it.

When the revamped Fitbit Android app launched last week, I came across another Android app called FitTap. FitTap combines Fitbit activity logging with NFC.

There's two versions of the app, one is free, but requires you to use … Read more

Last November I covered a new service called Sunrise. The goal of the service, after connecting it to your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Calendar accounts, was to help you start the day with a personalized agenda in your inbox. It would incorporate details about upcoming meetings, as well as who you're meeting with, from the various services.

While having an organized agenda automatically created for you each morning with important details was intriguing, after using the service for a few weeks the e-mail started to feel more like spam than a helpful digital assistant.

Fast-forward to today: Sunrise has … Read more

Are you still using the iPhone's default weather app? If so, may I suggest a 99-cent weather app released last week that provides more weather information than the default app, along with a sense of zen-like calm? Haze was released last week and is currently being offered for 99 cents. (When this introductory offer expires, Haze will cost $2.99.)

After launching Haze and allowing it to know your location, the app will offer you a new theme called Purple Haze. After these two steps, you'll be greeted with Haze's simple, subtly animated interface. In the middle … Read more

Last night, Facebook pushed an update to its Android app that lets users update their cover photo from directly within the app. In the past I had covered an Android app that helped you create a new cover photo, but it required you to use the Web site in order to actually change the photo.

To change your cover photo using the Android app, make sure you're running the latest version of the Facebook app. Pull up your own timeline and tap on your cover photo. You can then select "View Photo" or "Change Cover"; … Read more