widgets

The time has finally come, and iOS 5 will be available to the general public October 12. During the last four months, we have been covering some of the key features of iOS 5 to ensure we were prepared to help you on the first day of iOS 5's release. Below you will find 15 tips and tricks to help you master iOS 5, and maybe even allow you to show off a bit to your friends. … Read more

Saving battery power is a popular topic when it comes to Android; that's why so many people turn to task managers to help them see which apps are running in the background. Instead of scouring the Android Market for the perfect task manager or killer, you can just use the built-in one that Samsung's flavor of Android provides. While it doesn't auto-kill apps after a certain period, it does keep you informed of which apps are running and let you close them all at once or individually. Read on to learn how to pull the … Read more

The Trapster app for Android has received a major update with a new user interface, a new widget for your home screen, and an emphasis on helping users confirm or deny reported road hazards with a turning of a digital thumb.

New to this version 3.0 update (dated July 21, according to the Android Market) is a refreshed interface that makes it easier to report road hazards while on the go. The map can now display satellite and terrain data in addition to the standard street data. New onscreen elements include icons on the left edge of the map … Read more

Waze, one of our favorite free GPS apps for Android and iOS, gets a version 2.4 update today that adds text-to-speech guidance, a commuting widget for the Android app, and a host of smaller improvements.

The biggest change is the addition of a text-to-speech (TTS) engine powered by Nuance that adds spoken street, exit, and highway names to its turn-by-turn directions. Users will also receive spoken alerts as they approach road hazards reported by other Waze users. TTS is currently only available to Android and iOS users in the U.S. and Canada, though there are plans to roll … Read more

Beautiful Widgets outfits your Android OS with exactly what its name promises. It gives you the power to customize your Home screen with various-size clocks and weather widgets, plus smaller Toggle widgets that activate Wi-Fi, vibrate, plane mode, brightness, and more. The app also lets you customize appearance settings like widget text color and background transparency.

The free Beautiful Widgets Lite is bare bones. It comes with different clocks and weather widgets, but no Toggle widgets, Battery widget, or Accuweather services. And most importantly, it lacks access to skins, which could be something of a deal breaker, considering the skins … Read more

Please keep in mind that this post is based off of a beta version of iOS 5. Apple can (and often does) change the behavior of features before the latest OS hits consumers hands. If anything drastically changes in regards to this feature in iOS 5, we will be sure to update the post.

When Apple announced a new Notification Center with iOS 5, it also revealed that iOS 5 would come with a couple of widgets: weather and stocks. The widgets are active in the Notification Center, the same place you will find the rest of your app alerts on iOS 5.

Some users may not want one or both of the widgets displayed on their iPhone or iPod Touch (as of iOS 5 beta 1, the iPad does not have widget support). This simple guide will show you where to find the toggle switch to turn the widgets off. … Read more

In just a week and a half Apple will take the wraps off "the future of iOS" at its Worldwide Developers Conference. Two features that are said to be making a debut as part of that introduction are widgets and a new notifications system.

Buried at the tail end of a post on murmurs that Apple's been inviting press from around the world to come to the WWDC keynote, TechCrunch claims that Apple will be using that time to introduce "completely revamped notifications and widgets."

This is not the first time Apple's notification system … Read more

Your Gmail inbox will soon become a list-maker.

Over the next two weeks, Google is rolling out a new feature to its Gmail users, a "people widget" that tidily aggregates the content you share with your contacts.

Stashed away on the right side of the screen, the people widget will list the messages, phone calls, and chats between you and a contact. You'll also get a glance at e-mails, shared Calendar activities and Google Docs, and Google Buzz updates. You should be able to click an item to interact with the entry.

The widget also provides quick … Read more

You just got your shiny Google Music beta invite and you are eager to use it, but you don't like the idea of having to have your browser (or an extra tab) open to stream music on your Mac? We can relate. We created a simple guide to show you how to turn Google Music into a Dashboard widget on your Mac, allowing you to close your browser and still enjoy your streaming music collection.

… Read more