Mint has now launched its much-loved financial software application for Android tablets. Mint.com is an awesome way to keep track of your spending and savings. It allows you to set goals, keep track of where you are spending your money, as well be reminded when you have bills coming up to be paid. If you have a hard time keeping track of your money, Mint.com is the solution for you. We have covered Mint extensively at MakeUseOf, because it really is that damn good.

Mint.com offers browser-based solutions as well as apps for iPhone, Android Smartphones and iPad. For owners of 9 and 10 inch Android tablets, now there is an app for you. For now, this app is designed to work on 9 and 10 inch models, although it seems that you can use it with 7 inch ones as well. At this point, there has not been word if the amazingly popular Kindle Fire will be supported. Obviously, Mint has supporting Android in their sights, and it’s impossible to ignore the popularity of the Kindle.

The app offers no new functionality from the earlier versions, but that’s not a bad thing, since the earlier version got nearly everything right. The only visible changes are some reordered modules and font changes.

For Mint, this is a great move. It opens a whole new market, and one that is growing fast. If you are a Mint user with an Android tablet, the time to download is now.

Source: Tech Crunch

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Facebook scams are a dime a dozen, but they still tend to entice lots of people to click and share them. Only last week we told you about a scam which offers an alleged $500 Amazon gift certificate, and today we found out about one that offers instant weight loss.

Speedy weight loss is something many people are looking for, and this specific scam is using a very popular diet – the HCG diet. The new scam reads something along the lines of “I’ve lost 10 pounds in just one week all thanks to HCG!” and a link for you to click. There are other versions of it going around, but you get the gist. Whether or not you can actually lose all this weight with HCG is not the point, because the link has nothing at all to do with it.

So what is it about? The usual thing. If you click on the link you will be told to share it with all your friends, add a favorable comment, and will then be promptly redirected to some website that tries to sell you something unrelated or get you to fill a survey. These Facebook scams exist to drive more traffic to the scammer’s websites, preferably while earning some of your money on the way. So please, don’t fall for it. And if you see your friends sharing something similar, do let them know they’re endangering everyone, and get them to remove the post from their wall.

Source: Sophos

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I recently wrote a review of ShoeBox for iPhone, and I have to say it is a cool application for anyone who has a lot of old pictures that they want to bring to the digital age. Basically, ShoeBox allows you to use your iPhone’s camera to scan in your old photos, and bring them to the 21st century. Of course, once you scan in the pictures, you can share them via their app and on Facebook. Well, they have issued an update to their iPhone application, and it makes it even cooler than it already was.

What makes this update something special is that it is one of the first applications that allow users to plug things into the past on their Facebook Timeline. For example, if you had a photo of you as a baby from 1986, you could scan it into ShoeBox and post it, and it would show on your Timeline as occurring in 1986. Normally, the picture would show as the date you uploaded it, which breaks the Timeline feel and makes it a non accurate representation of your life.

In addition to going back in time, this update also allows you to tag photos from the application. They also elected to use Facebook’s Photos API, which forces users to manually add the date to pictures, but allows the photos to be posted in a bigger, more beautiful format.

This is an example of what makes Timeline cool. It shows that when done right, an app that works with Timeline can really enhance the users social experience, and not just say what movie you want to see or what song you just listened to. I hope other developers take a cue from ShoeBox and make a strong creative use of the Timeline.

iTunes Link

Source: Techcrunch

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Valve’s ever-popular content delivery platform Steam has taken its first steps into the mobile world with the launch of two apps for iOS and Android users. Despite both being available for anyone to download on the App Store and Android Market, Valve have so far only allowed a small number of users use the service.

Currently in beta, both apps provide quick access to  friend statuses, chat and the store front where games can be purchased using saved credentials. In addition to this there is a “Friend Activity” area that logs purchases, achievements and other events and news sections for updates from blogs and Valve themselves.

As it stands these news sections are pretty bare, but the game catalogue is complete and fully functional, allowing for the purchase of full titles from your Android or iOS device. Valve’s president and co-founder, Gabe Newell, said:

“Seeing which of your friends are online and playing a game, sending quick messages, looking at screenshots for an upcoming game, or catching a sale — these are all features customers have requested. Mobile is changing way people interact, play games and consume media, and the Steam app is part of our commitment to meet customer demands and expand the service functionality of Steam.”

Don’t worry if you’re not in the beta just yet, simply by downloading one of the apps and logging in (as well as providing the Steam Guard code sent to your email address) Valve will add you to the list of users awaiting beta entry.

If you’ve been lucky enough to get beta access already then let us know what you think!

Download: Steam for iOS @ App Store
Download: Steam for Android @ Android Market

Source: Steam

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Dolphin has recently announced the release of two brand new add-ons for its popular Android browser. The Dolphin browser already features a number of useful add-ons such as Read It Later, Dolphin Translate, Dolphin.fm, and various tab management add-ons, and has now added the Skitch add-on and the Evernote add-on.

Skitch, a powerful photo editor and annotator, has recently been acquired by Evernote, the popular notetaking app, and both are now available as add-ons for Dolphin browser on Android. To use the add-ons, you will need to have accounts with Skitch and Evernote. With Skitch, you also need to have the actual Skitch app installed on your device. If you don’t already have accounts or the apps, Dolphin will redirect you to the market when you try to use the add-ons.

To use the add-ons, slide the screen to the left to reveal the right side panel. For Skitch, first find an image you want to edit, and then tap the Skitch icon. This will load the image in Skitch where you can edit and annotate it. For Evernote, simply choose the text you want to save, tap the Evernote icon and insert the clipping. You can upload it to Evernote right from within Dolphin.

Dolphin is promising lots more add-ons in the upcoming year, and asks for user feedback and ideas for new add-ons and features. So if there’s an add-on you always wished you could have in Dolphin, go ahead and contact them. You’ve got nothing to lose!

What do you think of Dolphin’s new add-ons? Did you get a chance to try them yet?

Skitch add-on for Dolphin [2.2+]
Evernote add-on for Dolphin [2.0.1+]

Source: Dolphin Browser Blog

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Grooveshark, who recently launched a beautiful new web app for their service, has been shut down in Germany. It’s a sad day for German music lovers, because in Germany there are not many other options for listening to music. Spotify is not available and neither is Rhapsody. Even Google Music, which only uses the music you already have, is not available.

One option that is available is Simfy. Simfy offers subscription models like Spotify, where you can get access to music for free, with ads, or pay a monthly fee for a premium service. Grooveshark also offers a method for German users to export their playlists to text files, which you can access here.

The difference between Simfy and Grooveshark is that Simfy was able to work with GEMA, the body that controls most music licensing in Germany. Grooveshark was unwilling to pay their “unreasonably high” licensing costs and has decided to pull out of the country. A Grooveshark representive said they offered GEMA “€150,000 to officially enter the country and a sustainable rate moving forward.”

Be wary, because Grooveshark is facing lawsuits in regions all over the world, and your country could be next. I recommend looking at SciLor’s Grooveshark Downloader or Groovedown to download your playlists, for when they shut down in your country as well. Once they are gone, users can look at Spotify, Rhapsody, Google Music, iTunes Match, the aforementioned Simfy or one of the many other legal music distribution platforms on the web.  Or maybe you could recommend another?

Source: Gigaom

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Good job, Internet. You win.

As the day of online activism opposing SOPA and PIPA continued, supporters quickly began to have second thoughts. Now, the final blows have been struck. Senator Harry Reid has decided to put the Protect IP Act on permanent hiatus, and Representative Lamar Smith pulled his support for the Stop Online Piracy Act. In doing so, the bills have been effectively killed.

There was amusement to be had from watching those who formerly backed the bill scatter as the wave of anti-SOPA/PIPA press swept the Internet on January the 18^th. Sites regularly used by nearly everyone with Internet access, such as Google and Craigslist, placed public denouncements of the bills on their sites. Over 4.5 million people signed Google’s online petition against the bills.

Other sites, such as Wikipedia, Reddit and Wired, restricted access to their content as a warning about what could happen if the bills became law. An estimated 162 million people visited Wikipedia during its 24-hour blackout, no doubt helping to spread the word.

Today’s news that the bills will not be moving forward was met with celebration that – this being the Internet  – manifested itself in images like the one above. It is unlikely that we’ll ever see these particular bills come to a vote now that they’ve been so thoroughly tarnished.

But don’t be surprised if we see the ideas resurface later. Even while removing support for SOPA, Representative Lamar Smith stated “The Committee will continue work with copyright owners, Internet companies, financial institutions to develop proposals that combat online piracy and protect America’s intellectual property.” Translation? This isn’t over.

Source: Ars Technica

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Overclocking is a ritual among computer hardware geeks. Once you’ve done it you enter into a circle of extreme geeks who can quote voltages, clock speeds and processor multipliers. This elite group can increase performance of their computers without spending extra dough – but they also risk the chance of permanent hardware damage.

In the past, such damage has been strictly considered a warranty-breaking offense. Now Intel is changing its tune for customers willing to part ways with a little extra cash. The company now offers a Performance Tuning Protection Plan that covers you if you push your processor beyond its limits.

While you do have to pay for the plan, the pricing is reasonable. The Core i5-2500K can be covered for $20, the Core i7-2600K/2700K can be covered for $25, and the Core i7-3930K/3960X can be covered for $35. Coverage is considered an addition to the standard 3 year warranty. Plans aren’t available for other processors.

Intel’s decision to open this program is a sign of the confidence the company has in its products. The low prices on these plans indicate that the company believes there’s a very small chance that users will be able to destroy their processors accidently by overclocking them.

Ironically, that makes buying a protection plan unnecessary. But if you’ve always wanted to overclock – and decided not to for fear of roasting your processor – this warranty should give you the confidence you need.

Source: Slashgear
Image Credit: News Poland

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Apple has created a stir with their new cloud based music service known as iTunes Match. When it was first announced, there was a general consensus that it had the potential to be amazing. For iPhone owners, the prospect of taking all their music to the Cloud and having it matched with a high quality version direct from Apple’s servers was a winning proposition (especially if those songs were acquired from less than legal channels).

The program finally launched, and we here at MakeUseOf offered a handy guide for getting started. However, upon launch it was not available in all the countries people wanted to use it. Now, Apple is working to rectify that situation by launching the service in 19 new countries. They are mainly focusing on Latin America, the Baltic States and the Netherlands.

The full list of new countries are as follows – Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Guatemala, Honduras, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela.

iTunes Match is now available in a total of 37 countries. Apple is obviously trying to expand their service, which costs $24.99 per year, to all kinds of new markets. If it is not available where you live, don’t fret, because you can assume Apple is going to do everything in their power to get it there.

Source: MacRumors

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There are few companies easier to bash than Ubisoft when it comes to copy protection. The company has long used an activation scheme on most of its games that ties activation to your computer’s hardware configuration. This means that when you change your hardware, you have to re-activate your Ubisoft games before they’ll run.

Such a process isn’t entirely unheard of in software. Registration keys for Microsoft Windows work in a similar way. But Microsoft’s product registration usually only kicks in after a major system change, such as a motherboard upgrade. Ubisoft’s DRM is apparently a bit more sensitive.

This was discovered by Guru3D when they attempted to use the new game Anno 2070 for graphics benchmarking. Though aware of the game’s DRM, the site figured that swapping out video cards would be OK. They were wrong. Swapping cards required that the software be activated all over again. That would be fine if Ubisoft offered unlimited activations, but they don’t. Many of the company’s titles only come with three activations. If you use them up, you could be out of luck.

Ubisoft’s support does state that further activations can be provided if you use them up, but Guru3D’s initial attempts to obtain them were refused. The site has since been contacted by Bluebyte, the developer of Anno 2070, and activation for the site’s copy has been unlocked. But this action is almost certainly a unique response to Guru3D’s complaint.

If you’re going to buy an Ubisoft game, you’d better be careful about your hardware upgrades.

Source: Guru3D

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Music is becoming more and more social, right? Well, the folks at Facebook obviously think so. Facebook has just announced a new service which allows users to listen to music with your friends and do so in perfect synchronization. For now, the service only works with Spotify and Rdio, but more services should be added soon.

So how does it work? The new service is integrated with Facebook chat. In the chat sidebar, look for a note icon which indicates that a friend is listening to music. If you want to join in, hover over that person, and click on the “Listen with” button. You should now be able to listen to whatever your friend is listening to, thus having your very own private DJ. This works in larger groups as well, in which one person controls the music and the rest listen.

Since the whole thing is part of Facebook’s chat, you can talk with your friends about what your listening to, “just like when you’re jamming out at a performance or dance club”. While the service seemed at first like a way for Spotify-deprived people (like me) to enjoy some Spotify action, it seems that all parties have to be using the service in question. This means that if I don’t have Spotify installed, I can’t listen in on a friend who’s using Spotify. Too bad, but legally understandable.

The new service should be rolling out to all users within the next few weeks, so don’t panic if you can’t see it yet. It remains to be seen whether users in countries which don’t get to enjoy Spofity and Rdio even get the new service, since it’s going to be quite useless for them anyway.

What do you think of the new service?

Source: ZDNet

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Foursquare is bringing Explore, a popular feature from their mobile platform, over to browsers. Explore is designed to use the billions of check-ins and millions of tips left by Foursquare users to help find places to eat and shop. What better way to make a decision than with the help of millions of Foursquare users who have been around and seen it all? Not only does it use the giant check-in and tip library, but it also uses information from yourself and your friends. This way, the recommendations are catered specifically to the kinds of things you enjoy.

The web version should be familiar to Foursquare users, but there are some slight improvements over the original mobile version. On the mobile version, you can only use Explore to find places that are near your location, but with the web version you can seek recommendations from anywhere in the world.

Obviously, with the web version you get much more screen space to work with. This makes it easy to gauge distance and come up with a better plan of attack.

Foursquare is really stepping their game up, and a personal recommendation engine that you can get access to on the go or on your computer brings their feature set to another level. It allows them to compete with social networks and other recommendation engines at the same time.

Source: VentureBeat

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Good news Cut the Rope fans! You are no longer limited to playing your favorite game on your mobile device. Microsoft, together with ZeptoLab and Pixel Lab, has created an HTML5 version of of the popular game, which you can play for free on any major browser.

The free game includes 27 levels, and you can play it right now simply by pointing your browser to CutTheRope.ie. As mentioned, the game was developed entirely in HTML5, no Flash in sight (ideally), and was made especially for playing on Microsoft’s flagship browser, Internet Explorer 9.

If pure HTML 5 sounds too good to be true, you’re probably right. As mentioned in a Behind the Scenes page made by the game’s developers, some media playback issues in Chrome and Firefox forced them to fall back on a Flash plugin for correct music and sound effects. I tried the game on Chrome, and while it worked well, even with Flash disabled (except for some minor audio bugs), it wouldn’t even load when all of my plugins were automatically blocked. This might be due to a bug in Chrome.

While the game works well in all browsers, some levels, which are unique to this version, can only be unlocked by pinning the game to the taskbar, an exclusive feature to Internet Explorer 9. So this might be a good a time as any to try IE9, if you haven’t done so yet.

Happy Om Nom Nomming!

Source: PCMag

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