Daily News Courier

DashClock Widget v1.2 adds shortcuts, visual tweaks, new languages

If you've got an Android phone or tablet that's got Android 4.2.x and you're not using DashClock Widget, you are, quite frankly, doing it wrong. And the app that turns the Jelly Bean lock screen widgets into more than just wishful thinking — by the way, it's already in the 50,000 to 100,000 download range, and we'd be willing to bet it's on the high end of that — got an update to version 1.2 today, bringing with it a number of improvements.

First up are some new visual tweaks, allowing for custom opacity, as well as the ability to center the clock. You also can assign application shortcuts to the weather and clock widgets. Nice. Then there's the addition of extensions for missed calls and new text messages. Or perhaps you'd be interested in support for French, German, Spanish and Russian. Use Microsoft Exchange for your calendar? It's now supported. Some of this is tucked into a new "advanced" menu, so dive into the settings to see the new features.

Press update adds DashClock Widget support

Google Reader client Press has just added support for the popular new widget DashClock just a few days after its release.  DashClock Widget provides a platform to make "extensions" that plug into the widget from other apps to put pertinent notifications and information on your screen. Users on Android 4.2 with DashClock installed now have the ability to see their Press unread count and last sync time on the widget. This should play nicely with the recent update to Press that added background syncing support.

So far we've got Falcon Pro and Press that have updated to support the widget's extensions, along with the built-in items like weather and Gmail, and we're sure to see more as DashClock Widget becomes even more popular.

ROM Manager adds delta updates, TWRP recovery support

ROM Manager, a staple app used by practically anyone who roots and switches ROMs often, has just added support for both delta (incremental) updates and TWRP recovery. Delta updates (downloads, really) will let users who are downloading and flashing new ROMs — like those of you on nightlies — just download and apply the new portions of the ROM, rather than the entire thing. If you have a previous zip file of your ROM on the device, ROM Manager will send you an incremental zip (of about 20MB) to apply and get the changes. This will save a lot of time, battery and data when flashing updates to the same ROM over and over again.

The latest ROM Manager also supports TWRP (Team Win Recovery Project), so if users prefer that over ClockworkMod Recovery, they can flash it directly through the app rather than separately. If you're not using ROM Manager yet, give it a look at the Play Store link above.

Foursquare adds features, refreshes interface in latest update

Everyone's favorite social check in service Foursquare has just pushed out a notable update in the Play Store, bringing a refreshed UI, some new features and a lot of polish. The previous UI wasn't bad or ugly by any stretch, but the Foursquare team has managed to add a bit more functionality and design to this latest update. The main homescreen is now a bit cleaner, with a universal "explore" search bar at the top and options to check in, see your last location and add a photo at the bottom of the screen. A now Android-standard swipe to the right reveals a settings screen to access your profile, lists, settings and friends — although curiously there's still a very iOS-like menu slide button in the upper left corner.

The Check In screen has received a facelift as well, with some cleaner lines and little more visual flare. The text box asking "What are you up to?" is now more prominently laid over a map of the check in location with an option to add a picture still prominently set to the right of it. There's still a bit more cleaning up and unification of the UI to go, but things are looking better with each update.

Numenta’s Brain-Inspired Software Adds Smarts to the Grid

The company’s Grok software processes “fast data” for EnerNoc and makes predictions about customers’ energy usage.

People in technology know there’s more and more data being created, but artificial intelligence startup Numenta is tackling a slightly different problem: the speed at which data is produced.

Plume for Twitter updates widget design, adds new features

Plume for Twitter updated its main app to closely tie into Android's new design guidelines many months ago, but its widget still lacked the new visual holo flare until today. The new widget is the same as far as functionality goes, but has received a drastic facelift. It is now a "holo dark" theme, with buttons and colors that more closely match that of the actual app. You still get a great visual representation of tweets, mentions and messages, as well as direct compose, refresh and search keys.

There are also several other improvements as part of this update. You can now make multiple columns in both the app and widget that specify between accounts — which is a huge deal for multiple account users — and Facebook accounts can now display in the widget as well. There's also now smoother scrolling, resend dialogues when picture uploads fail and fixes with pull-to-refresh.

That's a whole bunch of notable updates that should keep Plume users happy. If you've yet to try out Plume, you can head the Play Store link at the top of this post to check it out.

Facebook borrows from itself, adds voice messages to main app

A couple weeks after adding the feature to the Facebook Messenger app, voice messages are now a part of the main Facebook application. These aren't going to replace phone calls anytime soon — and they're not really supposed to — but they can be a fun little way to drop someone a note on Facebook, or to send voice messages when cellular calls aren't practical or available.

Perhaps even more surprising is that Facebook actually updated its changelog on the app with this latest version. Along with voice messaging, you should be able to open and view images a little faster, and share your friends stories to timelines, pages and groups. 

Flutter Adds Gestural Controls to Netflix, YouTube, and More

The free software now lets you control music and video on the Web through a webcam-equipped computer.

Flutter, a startup offering free software that allows you to control music and videos on a computer with simple hand gestures, is adding to its repertoire of gestural tricks. The San Francisco-based company is rolling out the ability technology can control content on the Web, too.

Google adds localized graphics support to the Play Store

Google has released today on its Android Developers blog information about localizing graphics for Play Store listings. It's no secret that Google Play is quickly expanding its reach to many new countries. Part of making the expansion to new markets successful is targeting promotional materials to specific countries. Along with offering localized translations of apps and descriptions, developers can now use different graphics and promotional materials depending on the country the user is accessing the Play Store from as well. Developers could now, for example, offer a different splash page for a country or region's holiday during a certain period, or offer language-specific graphics in each region which the app supports the language.

Google notes in its blog post that a full 2/3 of app revenue in Google Play now comes from outside of the United States, making it clear to developers that this is something important to pay attention to.

Source: Android Developers Blog

Twitter App Adds Image Filters After Losing Integrated Instagram Photos