Review – Google Sky Map (Android)

The night sky is a truly beautiful sight to behold, with millions of twinkling lights pulsing to their own natural rhythm, undisturbed by centuries of human life.
For many people though that’s pretty much the extent of their celestial knowledge, with most constellations so abstract and stars so hard to identify that you’d need some kind [...]

Review – Opera Mini 5 beta (Android)

Opera may not be the most popular desktop browser around but it has gathered a large following on mobile handsets, with some reports stating that the Java version is now more popular than the iPhone’s Safari for browsing the mobile web.
But is it really worth using up valuable space on the phone memory for something [...]

Review – Wiki-Droid (Android)

Ah, good old Wikipedia. Whether it’s used as a sneaky way of double-checking work or just to answer a random question from a pub quiz, it’s certainly taken the world by storm since it’s inception in 2001. Yes, I just checked Wikipedia for that date.
Following on the theme set down by the other of today’s [...]

Review: National Rail (Android)

While the UK’s  train service has been getting better in terms of punctuality over the last decade, it’s still not the most reliable or consistent way of travelling on public transport, as anyone who’s been affected by rail-replacement busses will testify.
The plain-titled National Rail app for Android phones looks to help you avoid any engineering [...]

Review: Ethereal Dialpad (Android)

Music and visual effects go together like wine and cheese, as anyone who’s tried out some of the popular music programs’ visualisations will attest. The cryptically named Ethereal Dialpad attempts to go one step further than your standard run-of-the-mill visualisation though by throwing interactivity into the mix.
It’s not the first app to do this, but [...]

Review: Pocket Drink Mixer (Android)

Cocktails are strange and magical alcoholic concoctions. Unlike other high-alcohol beverages like whisky or rum that you crack open and pour out of a bottle, cocktails require a very delicate balancing act of ingredients, meticulously measured up to produce a unique and pleasant taste.
They’re also notoriously difficult to pull off successfully without at least some [...]

Review: SoundHound (Android)

Have you ever woken up with a song in your head that you don’t recognise and then spend the whole day with it playing over and over in your head without ever knowing what the devil that tune is called?
Well the days of singing tunelessly to colleagues in an attempt to discover the source may [...]

Review: Favorite Recipes (Android)

So your last meal was a bit of a failure. Despite throwing in all your favourite ingredients into the pan, for some reason the food that came out tasted like damp shoes with too much cayan pepper. You vow to set out and buy a recipe book in an effort to discover meals that you [...]

Review: Learn Japanese (Android)

I have to admit, I’m pretty poor at learning languages. I can speak some basic Russian, German, Spanish and Japanese, but I always end up frustrated with most courses after a month or two, resulting in a vocabulary that stretches as far as ‘A beer please’ and ‘Are you married?’
The recent appearance on the Android [...]

Review: Newspapers (Android)

According to popular belief, print media is dead. With circulation figures for paid newspapers dropping across the globe, consumers are turning to free papers and digital media outlets to sate their appetite for current affairs.
To circumnavigate the circulation issue, a large majority of the established print media organisations have moved online. But if you’re a [...]