David Gilson

If you think Whatsapp is the only Internet based text messaging substitute you’d be wrong. Viber has been around for awhile now, and not only is Viber taking on Whatsapp’s Internet routed messages, but it’s taking on Skype too with free VoIP based voice calls. Most importantly it now offers a desktop client with free video calling. 691 words

Google has long tried to get into the instant messaging and communications market. For around a decade, we’ve had Google Talk, which relied on the open XMPP standard. While that product has enjoyed support by many third party instant messaging clients, it has not become the mainstream messaging alternative that, say, Facebook has become in a very short time. At yesterday’s Google IO 2013 conference, the search giant released a Google Hangouts app for iOS and Android, which is set to become Google’s core communication tool. We take a look at what you can expect on your iPhone. 755 words

Pocket Casts from Shift Jelly software received a huge update to its Android client recently, somewhat leaving its iOS counterpart behind. Can the good-old iOS version still meet your podcatching needs? We take a look at Pocket Casts for iOS to find out. 514 words

Feedly is a modern application built for reading RSS feeds. It grew in popularity as being an alternative client for Google Reader. Since Google announced it would pull the plug on Reader, Feedly has gained more attention for stating that it will provide its own feed aggregation service and provide a seamless transition for Google Reader users. Is this the news app for you? Read on to find out. 548 words

When Microsoft announced its Hotmail replacement, Outlook.com, it was confirmed that existing Live.com users would be able to create an outlook.com alias. This had presented users with the dilemma of switching to a brand new Outlook.com account, which would cause them to lose all of their Windows Phone Store purchases, or to simply create an outlook.com alias for contact purposes. The problem, albeit trivial, with an alias is that it could not be used to sign into any Microsoft services. Fortunately, Microsoft have now allowed sign-in by alias for those who want to be identified by their shiny new Outlook.com ID. 232 words

These days we all take Over The Air (OTA) firmware updates for granted. However, there was a time when firmware updates had to be done manually. It’s a useful skill to have, especially when just sometimes even contemporary devices can find themselves left out in the cold when it comes to manufacturers spreading the firmware love. The course of DIY updates never run did smooth though, so not only do we discuss how to apply an upgrade, but we look at how you should approach restoring your device to its former state. 1386 words

Most people neglect backing up their devices. Normally this isn’t so much of a problem as contacts and calendar events are automatically stored in the cloud, and Google can backup device settings too. To the other extreme, we have the likes of Titanium Backup that is a comprehensive backup application for power users with root privileges. If you find that the built-in Google Backup isn’t comprehensive or reliable enough for you and that Titanium Backup is overkill for you, then Carbon Backup, made by the same team who made ClockWorkMod Recovery, is a new application that provides an excellent intermediate-level solution and doesn’t require you to have root access, but it helps. 1788 words

My regular life has me working from home, using a heterogeneous set of mobile platforms. Recently though, I’ve been travelling, which coincided with starting to use the Nexus 4, in complement to my Nexus 7. This is my story of going from familiar surroundings and being platform agnostic to living on the road and having Nexus devices being my front-line tech. 1800 words

For those who don’t know, Asana is a collaborative project managment web service. It has yet to grab mainstream attention but is used by several of the websites I write for as a mean for handing out and exchanging information on assignments for multi-person teams. Asana has had an official app for iOS for quite a while and has just released a version for Android. The app in question for Windows Phone is a third party app simply called Asana, which may raise trademark disputes if or when Asana decide to make an offiical app. 214 words