lwp

Reimagine your wallpaper with Ice Cream Sandwich LWP

For all their processor-stressing, battery-draining drawbacks, live wallpapers are still lovely to watch. This one animates the rainbow-esque screen that comes stock on Nexus gadgets and has become associated with Ice Cream Sandwich. Ice Cream Sandwich LWP will let you watch those swirls and bubbles in the wallpaper dance around.

The installation of this app goes smoothly. Most of the knocks against this wallpaper are the same as for any live wallpaper. It sucks your battery charge very quickly and it pushes your phone's RAM more than a wallpaper really should. It's clear that this particular live wallpaper … Read more

How to get your Android ready for Christmas

Look no further for suggestions on how to add the holiday magic to your Android device.

Games

A great way to pass the time while waiting for relatives to arrive or for those cookies to come out of the oven. Many games on the Android Market feature a Christmas or holiday theme for the season.

Angry Birds Seasons, by Rovio Mobile Ltd. No Android game list is complete without the mention of Angry Birds. Now your favorite slingshot bird action has a holiday feel.

Beyond Ynth Xmas Edition, by FDG Entertainment. Five free Christmas-themed levels to … Read more

AMD's gift to software developers

On Monday, AMD released a proposal for "Lightweight Profiling" instructions (or LWP; download here), describing a new way for software developers to gather information on software while it runs.

I've only had a few minutes to check out the document, but it looks pretty interesting. Existing performance analysis tools, like Intel's VTune and AMD's CodeAnalyst, generally create significant overhead when gathering performance information. They usually need code that runs in supervisor mode, for example, and they're just for developer use--they aren't meant to be used in production systems.

LWP lets applications gather their … Read more