apps

Shazam is an ingenious and free application that can identify the name, album, and artist of a song just by hearing it over your iPhone's microphone. That means you can hold up your iPhone to a song that's playing--on the radio, in a coffeeshop, at a party--and in a matter of seconds, Shazam can often tell you what song you're hearing, along with (if available) the album art, related YouTube videos, and iTunes purchase links. Shazam is surprisingly fast and accurate, but it works best in fairly quiet environments and/or with fairly loud music, and the … Read more

Meebo for Google Android is not a terrible instant-messaging application. But it isn't a very good representation of what IM clients for the Android platform can do, or even a good representation of what Meebo itself can do.

In this first release, the free Meebo mobile application lets you chat with friends on the major IM networks--Yahoo, Windows Live Messenger, AOL, ICQ, Jabber, and Google Talk. It also runs in the background while you work on other applications and scrolls message notifications across the status tray. So far, so good.

However, that about plays out Meebo's feature set … Read more

I'll admit that I'm more into puzzles and brain games than I am into, say, poker. Don't get me wrong. iPhone poker is cool, but the word game Wurdle is the one I can't put down as I nearly miss my bus stop.

In Wurdle ($1.99), you drag your finger in any direction over adjacent letters in a grid to form as many words as you can before time runs out. The grid size, word length, game duration, dictionary, and even tile color are all customizable. Wurdle keeps track of high scores and the longest … Read more

What makes Ringdroid a must-have for Google Android phones? It's a fast, free, and all-around-good ringtone maker that will only get better in future releases.

Ringdroid doesn't stop at creating ringtones. You can also turn any edited song into an alarm or notification. Hopefully the publisher won't quit with the Android platform, either. I know an iPhone, a Nokia, and a BlackBerry phone that could sure use some homegrown ringtones.

Related stories: - First Look video: TuneWiki -Gmote gets Mac and PC music going

You may have noticed a trend in my iPhone apps of the week posts: I mostly download games. To offer a little balance to my posts, this week I have a couple of useful iPhone apps that aren't just for when you want to waste some time. Both are free so you can take advantage of these useful tools right away.

Free Translator is a language translator that lets you send e-mails in different languages. The concept is fairly simple: choose a source language, choose a target language, and then hit translate. When you're finished, you can send … Read more

Customers paying Google for Gmail are guaranteed the e-mail service will be available 99.9 percent of the time or they get a refund. Now the company has extended the promise to Google Calendar, Google Docs, and all the other elements of its Google Apps service.

"Today, we're announcing that we will extend the 99.9 percent service level agreement we offer Premier Edition customers on Gmail to Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Talk," said Matthew Glotzbach, director of Google Enterprise product management, announced on the promised Google Apps reliability on its blog Wednesday. … Read more

Given that TuneWiki was one of the 10 top winners in Google's Android Challenge, it's no surprise we're taken by its originality and ambition.

The free music application for Google Android not only plays your media, but it also helps build your library with songs and YouTube music videos. An additional search for streaming lyrics attempts to get you singing the right words at the right time.

TuneWiki doesn't ace everything it sets out to do, but if you're willing to give it some leeway, you won't be disappointed. Check out the First Look … Read more

If you want to hear songs on your Google Android phone, open up the default player or pull up TuneWiki. If you want to hear songs play on your computer without ever putting down the Google Android phone, get Gmote.

Gmote is a free application that turns your Google Android phone into a remote control to pick, play, and pause music and videos on your Mac or PC. Not to be confused with the Firefox extension gMote ("g" as in "gesture"), this version works in tandem with the Gmote server you install on your computer. When … Read more

Microsoft announced at the Professional Developers Conference Tuesday that it is finally putting Office apps Word, Excel, and PowerPoint online, but not killing the traditional versions. It's about time Microsoft got with the program here. Online apps offer several advantages over software apps, which Google has been leveraging in its Google Docs suite. Primarily, documents that are created in an online app can be opened up for sharing and collaboration very simply.

If Microsoft Office were not a nearly ubiquitous piece of software, chances are the company would have added an online version earlier, due to another bit benefit … Read more