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Direct movies and add special effects to your videos with FX Guru

Why bother paying big bucks to put explosions, crashes, and other special effects goodies on your home movies? This app lets you take a video and then add one of several cool special effects to it. FX Guru is a really cute novelty to show off to friends and make them look like movie stars.

The app starts you off with three special effects. You can add more than a dozen more by ponying up a few bucks. The preloaded effects -- which are mostly disaster movie explosions -- should be more than enough. Each effect lasts about 10-15 seconds, … Read more

Apply visual effects to photos with Sketch Guru

Taking photos with your Android device can be fun, but adding a bit of extra creativity to your photos and sharing them via your favorite social networks can make it even more fun. Sketch Guru allows you to add some great-looking effects to your photos. It is easy to install and has a very neat and user-friendly layout.

Once downloaded, Sketch Guru will quickly and easily allow any user to apply creative effects to their images. The installation process is supereasy. Although some of the effects are slow to apply, the software is fairly quick. The sheer number of effects … Read more

Top travel apps for iOS

Between crowded airports, winter delays, and luggage loaded with gifts, holiday travel can be stressful. But with a little planning, you can make your trip a little easier from start to finish. So rather than gathering up a collection of apps that help you book flights, we decided to make a different kind of travel collection.… Read more

Fan barbecue flames from a phone

It's no secret that barbecue enthusiasts take their craft very seriously. As well they should, considering the succulent results that occur through when proper attention is given to meat cooked over an open fire. However, all that attention can be time-consuming; time spent hovering over a pit is time that could be spent with family and friends.

The BBQ Guru CyberQ Wi-Fi combines a control station along with a fan that mounts inside the grill or pit. Capable of monitoring the temperature of the pit itself as well as up to three different meats, the grill gadget keeps grillers … Read more

SeatGuru mobile app barely gets off the ground

I can think of few Web sites that would benefit more from a good mobile app than SeatGuru, a much-loved service that tells you which seats on airplanes are good, and which are not. I never book a flight without checking it out.

The service finally has a mobile site. It's a useful app to have, but it's not a good app. It could have been so much more.

The best bit is that you can just put your airline and flight number into the app to see a map of the seats on the plane. That gives … Read more

Use NumberGuru to figure out who keeps calling you

NumberGuru is a free service that allows you to quickly look up who is calling you, in some cases even if they are calling you from a cell phone. The best part of the service, besides its speed, is the ability to reverse look up as many numbers as you want for free.

… Read more

This Day in Tech: Google and Visa compete for digital wallets; 'Apple is not going to change'

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET News for Thursday, August 25.

• You've probably heard by now that Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple. This leaves us with many questions. What will Jobs do as chairman? What will Apple look like three years from now? Now for some answers. Apple's new CEO, Tim Cook, e-mailed employees this morning to say that "Apple is not going to change."

• You might be swiping your mobile phone to pay for things. In May, Google and Visa … Read more

Dashboard phones track traffic light wait times

A network of dashboard smartphones that monitors traffic lights and congestion can tell drivers when to slow down to avoid idling, cutting fuel use by 20 percent, according to researchers at Princeton University and MIT.

SignalGuru (PDF) collates traffic data from images captured by dashboard smartphones.

It also graphically shows drivers how fast to go to avoid stopping at the next light; a commercial version would have audio suggestions. The system could also be developed to advise motorists to take a side street to avoid congestion ahead.

The researchers deployed iPhones on car dashboards in Cambridge, Mass., and in Singapore. In the former, where traffic signals with fixed schedules are used, SignalGuru could predict when lights would change with an error margin of two-thirds of a second. In Singapore, which has signals that adapt to traffic volume, the error increased to one second up to just over two seconds. … Read more

The 404 861: Where we're putting it all out there (podcast)

Have you ever received a phone call from a mystery number, but had no way to find out who was on the other side? A new online service called NumberGuru lets you perform a reverse number search to identify the source, and our friends from BeenVerified.com are in the studio to tell us all about it.

There are a few services like WhitePages that offer similar features, but NumberGuru is free and accessible from the Numberguru.com Web site, or with any one of its smartphone apps. Even better, the site lets you share comments on phone numbers to warn other users about spammers and telemarketers, and BeenVerified.com also offers background checks to dig up more details about the caller.

The 404 Digest for Episode 861

BeenVerified does background checks. Why bother to remember when you can just use Google? Great fear as PS1 discs begin to oxidize and degrade after 10 years.

Episode 861 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more