7 Google Android Apps to Protect Your Phone from Virus

Google Android is one of the most popular operating systems in the mobile world. As an open source platform it allows others to modify the system files and develop applications. Unfortunately this can result in security threats to the very device that stores all your personal information. Protecting your personal data is easy with one of these free securities and antivirus applications offered for Android.

Antivirus Free
The Antivirus Free application will protect your phone from any malicious apps and viruses by discovering new apps installed on your system and cross-referencing them with a database. The app will request certain permissions which all for an easy installation and function.

Avast! Mobile Security
This application is a fully featured antivirus and anti-theft security application. The avast! application has an automatic virus scans and alerts for infected URL’s. In addition, if your phone is rooted you can add a firewall, control anti-theft features with remote SMS commands.

AVG Antivirus free

The AVG Antivirus is a free security application that protects your smartphones and tablets in real-time, from any viruses, malware and spyware or online corruption. In addition, this app has a task killer, phone locator, app lock and real-time scanner.

Dr.Web Antivirus Light 
This application will not effect your mobile phone operating system performance or reduce the batter life. Dr. Web Antivirus Light uses a distinctive process for discovering new virus families based on previous threats which reduce the size of the virus database.

Lookout Security & Antivirus
On a daily and weekly basis the Lookout application will scan your mobile phone for viruses. In addition, Lookout will scan the root folder of your mobile phone and solve any other problems relating to holes in security.

NetQin Mobile Security & Antivirus
The NetQin application identifies new applications installed and check a database for malicious apps. The functions and use are practical and user-friendly. In addition, there is an anti-theft feature which will allows you to track your robbed phone through Google Maps.

Zoner Antivirus Free
The Zoner Antivirus application provides protection against trojans, worms, spyware, adware, malware and viruses. In addition, the application offers theft protection which enables you to control remotely your device through SMS messages.

It could be devastating if your mobile phone is lost, stolen, or compromised by a virus. It is free and easy to protect all your information stored in your Google Android with one of these antivirus applications.

Tags: Anti-theft Security, Antivirus Free, Automatic Virus Scans, Avast! Mobile Security, Dr.Web Antivirus Light, Google Android Apps, Lookout Security & Antivirus, Mobile Phone Operating System Performance, NetQin Mobile Security & Antivirus, Security Holes, Trojan Worms, Zoner Antivirus Free

Source : techtalkafrica[dot]com

Is Iran blocking international news broadcasts to the Middle East?

Is Iran blocking international news television from being broadcast in the Middle East and Europe? At least one news channel is claiming that it is, with others condemning the jamming efforts of some unknown body.

Multiple international news organizations are complaining about what they claim is the deliberate jamming of television and radio news broadcasts inside the Middle East, with at least one organization naming Iran as being responsible for the blockage.

Organizations including the BBC, German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle and Voice of America have reported that satellite signals across the Middle East and parts of Europe are being jammed, in what is being termed a “blatant violation of international regulations.” The jamming of signals from multiple broadcasters was confirmed earlier this week by Eutelsat, a French-based satellite provider responsible for the broadcasting of the jammed channels, which reported that the “deliberate and intermittent interference that began earlier this week” originated from Syria.

The BBC issued a statement yesterday about the jamming, saying that “The BBC, together with a number of other broadcasters, is experiencing deliberate, intermittent interference to its transmissions to audiences in Europe and the Middle East. Impacted services include the BBC World News and BBC Arabic television channels and BBC World Service radio services in English and Arabic. Deliberate interference such as the jamming of transmissions is a blatant violation of international regulations concerning the use of satellites and we strongly condemn any practice designed to disrupt audiences’ free access to news and information.”

While the BBC refrained from identifying Iran as the source of the signals, Deutsche Welle director general Erik Betterman didn’t hold back, not only naming Iran as the source, but going on to say that the jamming was an act of censorship by the Iranian government, going on to say that his channel would join with others to issue a protest resolution.

It’s not entirely clear how the signals are being jammed, but one suggestion is that the Syrian source is transmitting another signal on the same frequency as the jammed programming, aimed directly at the Eutelsat satellite sending the original programming. Such a move would essentially made the original signal unavailable to all viewers.

Perhaps not coincidentally, on Monday of this week, Eutelsat dropped nineteen Iranian state television channels from its “Hotbird” service. The move was made following not only the blocking of news programming, but also the European Union tightening its sanctions against Iran in response to the country’s nuclear program (Reportedly, the French broadcasting authority also asked the satellite company to consider dropping one particular channel from the line-up, “Sahar 1 TV”). Amongst the channels dropped was the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s own international news channel, Press TV. At the time, Iran officially protested the decision, describing it as a way of “prevent[ing] a dissenting voice to the broadcasting of Western thinking,” and adding that “the Islamist Republic reserves the right to take legal action against these measures.”

(Via.)

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Best Smartphones of 2012

There may still be a couple of months left of the year, but it is already clear to see that some phones have made more of an impact in 2012 than others – not always for the right reasons. This year has seen the Samsung Galaxy S3 become the most pre-ordered thing in history while the latest iPhone outsold earlier versions by a clear margin of one million during its launch weekend.

There have been a lot of great phones this year, and technology has been moving so rapidly that even devices which fall into the “mid-range” or “budget” categories are still highly impressive pieces of technology. But if I were to pick just four handsets that have been the most noteworthy this year, I would probably pick the following:

Samsung Galaxy S3 

Undoubtedly the best phone of the year. Not just in terms of sales figures and critical acclaim but also in the sheer number of innovations it has ushered in. For all Apple’s accusations over the past several months, it seems as though it is actually Samsung that is starting to think outside the box in the mobile arena, while Apple is beginning to rest on its laurels and compete through patent litigation.

The S3′s larger 4.8 inch Super AMOLED HD screen provides unparalleled picture quality and enough room to allow you to watch movies while typing out messages and emails. S Beam, an improved version of Android’s NFC sharing app, not only allows you to easily share music and videos but stands to completely revolutionise the way that people exchange phone numbers (tapping two phones together is surely much simpler than reading a string of numbers seven or eight times back and forth between two people).

Recent tests also showed that the Galaxy S3 outperformed all of its close competition in mobile web browsing battery performance, providing nearly six hours of use – while the iPhone, with its claimed 8 hours, only achieved 3 hours and 20 minutes. Some people are daunted by the larger size of the S3, yet this is something that one can easily become accustomed to in order to enjoy the excellent features on offer.

iPhone 5 

Image Credit by Want China Times

To many people it is an iPhone or nothing, and as far as iPhones go, this is the best one yet. It is the fastest, has the best data connections (the first iPhone with LTE) and has the best screen for movie content and web browsing.

Even though it has been beset by numerous problems, which have even been enough for diehard iFans and former Apple employees to want to switch to Samsung, it would be hard to not include the iPhone 5 in this list.

Despite its problems, this has still been the fastest selling iPhone to date and will most likely wind up being the biggest selling phone of 2012 by the end of December. Irrespective of sales figures, the iPhone marks some of the most important changes to come to the iPhone brand since it first began in 2007. There is the larger 4 inch screen, the new Lightning dock connector and many software enhancements including Facebook integration.

This will be the most popular phone of 2012 without a doubt, even if it won’t win the most awards or the most acclaim from critics, and so it rightfully deserves its place as one of the best phones of the year.

Nokia Lumia 920 

On the surface, the Lumia 920 doesn’t look a whole lot different to some of Nokia’s earlier Lumia phones. However, thanks to Windows Phone 8 and some new hardware that is now supported by the Microsoft OS, this stands to be the finest phone Nokia has produced since its fall from grace a few years back.

Nokia’s plans to reinvent itself were hampered earlier this year when Microsoft revealed that older Windows Phone 7 devices would not be able to update to the newer version, released later this month. This was effectively a nail in the coffin for Nokia’s first wave of Windows Phones and the Finnish company has been on tenterhooks for the past few months while it awaits the launch of WP8.

Windows Phone 8 has added support for multicore processors, and this is the first Nokia phone to come with a dual core 1.5GHz Krait chip and 1GB RAM. WP8 also added support for NFC and this will be one of the first Nokia phones with the new data sharing technology included. The only new addition to WP8 that has not made its way to the Lumia 920 is microSD card support, although this more likely due to aesthetic reasons than anything else. 32GB provides a fair amount of room, but the inability to expand this is disappointing to say the least.

This is also the first Nokia phone and one of the first Windows Phones to include LTE support.

Motorola RAZR MAXX / Droid RAZR MAXX 

Originally released in the United States at start of 2012 as the Droid RAZR MAXX, this handset was later released in other markets as the RAZR MAXX. (This is due to the fact that “Droid” is a trademark owned by Lucasfilm and Motorola only has licence to use it in the US). Why is this phone so special? Simply because the RAZR MAXX demonstrated that excellent smartphone features don’t need to come at the expense of battery life.

The RAZR MAXX has a 3300mAh Lithium Ion battery providing up to a month’s worth of standby battery life and nearly 18 hours of talk time. By comparison, the S3 has a 2100mAh, the Lumia 920 a 2000mAh, and the iPhone 5 a measly 1440mAh battery.

While smartphones are being crammed with more and more features, including face recognition, NFC data sharing, streaming online videos, and all sorts of other things that were just pipedreams a few years back, battery technology has not really changed much in the past 20 years.

To provide more battery life to meet the demands of all these extra power-hungry features the only option that manufacturers have is to keep making batteries bigger and bigger. Motorola showed this could be done while still producing a pocket friendly and slender device.

The RAZR MAXX is several months old now and in smartphone terms is starting to show its age. It shipped with Android 2.3 Gingerbread while the world is quickly heading towards 5.0 Key Lime Pie. Due to the Motorola custom interface the RAZR MAXX will miss out from future Android updates.

These are my picks for the best and most interesting phones of 2012. The best all round winner has to be the Samsung Galaxy S3, while the iPhone 5 and Lumia 920 will provide much to entice fans of either platform. The RAZR also goes to show that a phone doesn’t need to be drained of all power before the end of the day. All of these phones have proved to be extremely popular handsets on best-mobile-contracts.co.uk this year. It has been an interesting year for the smartphone industry and, if current trends continue, next year should be even more exciting.

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Source : techtalkafrica[dot]com

RockMelt’s iPad Web Browser Puts Social Media Front and Center

Image credit: RockMelt

In addition to the standard Safari Web browser that comes on the iPad, there are a few others in the App Store. Some of them make browsing faster and add a few features you don’t get with Apple’s, but by and large they look like, well, Web browsers.

RockMelt’s new browser for the iPad, which is being released today, will stand out since it looks nothing like a typical Web browser.

“Everything has been fairly uninspired equivalents of the desktop browser. There’s a URL bar and an open window for the page to load,” Tim Howes, the co-founder and CTO of RockMelt, told ABC News in an interview. “We wanted to build a whole new visual style of the interface.”

And that is what the start-up did. Similar to RockMelt’s desktop Web browser, it is built around social media.  Log in to your Facebook and Twitter accounts and it brings in the articles or sites your friends are sharing in different boxes. From that grid, you can tap to read an article or visit a site. And there’s an added social layer on top of that. You can tap one of RockMelt’s feedback buttons or “emoticodes” — such as “Like,” “LOL,” “Want,” “WTF,” or “AWW.” Pinch the article to shrink it and you’ll be back on your home-screen grid.

Of course, you can still search the Web and type in regular Web addresses by tapping on the buttons in the upper left hand corner. You can also save articles you might want to read later. In those respects it is a full-on browser and not just a news app aggregator, like FlipBoard or News360.

Howes and the CEO of the company, Eric Vishria, previewed the app for me a few weeks ago and I was impressed with the clean layout, the integrated social functionality, and the speed of the experience. Beyond all that, I was impressed with just how different it looks than other browsers out there.

The new RockMelt app will be available for free starting today for the iPad. According to the duo the company is working on bringing versions to the iPhone and other devices, so ultimately your browsing experience can be synced everywhere.

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com

‘HUEBRIX’ for iOS and Android game review

The mobile gaming category is currently populated by two types of games, those that are meant to give you a “console quality” feel and others that are designed specifically with the touchscreen and the usage case in mind. While it’s nice to have high quality 3D visuals and extensive character and story driven games, in the end, the second category of games is the one that works the best and is the most popular.

HUEBRIX falls in the latter category. It’s a puzzle solving game for iOS and Android where you have to drag out paths and fill the shapes. Sounds simple, but it’s often the simple things that are the most enjoyable. We decided to find out if it that’s the case with this game.

Title	HUEBRIX
Developer	Yellow Monkey Studios	Noodlecake Studios
Platform	iOS	Android
Content rating	4+	Everyone
Size	20.9MB	17MB
Price	$0.99 (on sale)

Gameplay

In HUEBRIX you have to drag a stack of colored tiles across a grid of squares. The number of tiles in the stack dictate how further you can drag the stack, i.e., you can drag a stack of five tile upon five blocks. Your goal is to drag all the tiles across the entire grid and make sure every block gets covered by the colored tiles with no spare tiles left.

If that sounds complicated to you, watch the video below. I’d suggest not watching it entirely or else you’d spoil the solution for the puzzles for yourself.

You will comes across several other objects within the environment that determine how you spread the squares around. Certain squares are blocked, some can only be accessed by a stack of a particular color, some don’t let you progress beyond that point and some force you to move in one particular direction after you cross them. Some even add or subtract from the number of colored tiles you have. Sometimes, you can also go through one side of the environment and come out from the other.

The basic premise of the game is very simple and you hardly need any instructions to play. The real fun is figuring out how you can fill out the squares using all the colors and this can be ridiculously challenging at times, even on the easier levels. Personally, I’m a fan of games that require you to rack your brain to complete the level instead of just mashing a button relentlessly until everything on the screen stops moving. HUEBRIX offers just the right amount of challenge that, even at its most intense, only makes you push on further instead of giving up. And the solution always seems simple once you find it, making you feel bit stupid for not thinking of it before. And if you’re really stuck, you can use one of the 20 available hints to make your progress a bit easier.

Once you go through the 100-odd levels of the game, you can purchase up to 300 more levels from within the game using in-app purchasing. The levels are separated as packs and are of varying difficulty. The game comes with a starter pack, along with Easy 1, Medium 1 and Medium 2 level packs, and you can purchase, Easy 2, 3, 4, 5, Medium 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Hard 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and Insane 1, 2 and 3 level packs. You can also purchase additional hints and you get a pack of 19 and 99 hints. Each of these packs are sold for $0.99, except for the 99 hints pack which costs $3.99.

This is one area of the game where it differs from some of the previous puzzle games we have seen before on mobile, like Cut the Rope, for example, where new levels are added over time for free. I personally prefer this method, where you pay once and keep getting new levels as they are released for free and let’s face it, who wouldn’t? While what HUEBRIX does is not necessarily bad it does mean you get less bang for your buck. The 100 levels in the game are not much and you can go through them in a single afternoon. After that, spending the cost of an entire game ($0.99 right now) on a pack of 30, 20 or 10 levels (depending upon their difficulty) feels a bit much. While I won’t advise the developer to give away the levels for free, they could at least put in more by default or squeeze in more levels in the packs.

One last aspect of the game is that you can create custom levels using the level editor. You can then share these with people on GameCenter and download levels created by them. This feature is only available on iOS.

Graphics and Sound

HUEBRIX is a basic 2D game but still manages to look stunning thanks to a bright color palette, particularly on high resolution displays. As usual, the game is best enjoyed on a tablet but even on the small display of a smartphone the game is quite enjoyable.

The sound is also quite nice. There is a single tune playing on a loop in the background but it’s soothing and goes well with the theme of the game.

Conclusion

HUEBRIX is a simple yet thoroughly enjoyable puzzle solving game that anyone with a smartphone or a tablet and some spare time on their hands can enjoy. It looks stunning and is filled with clever puzzles. Sure, the in-app purchasing system could be a bit more generous to the players but otherwise the game is perfect for anyone who enjoys solving puzzles.

(The game is on sale right now and selling for $0.99. Final price as of yet is unknown.)

Rating: 4/5
Pros: Simple gameplay, clever puzzles, stunning visuals, ability to create and download custom levels
Cons: Additional levels cost money and offer poor value

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com