I would like to share a track with you

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I would like to share a track with you

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Android Apps January 21st

Android Apps January 21st: "

Google Translate: An amazing new feature brings Google Translate alive. No, really. It translates what you’re saying in English to Spanish or vice versa, on the fly, in a conversational mode. Let’s let Kat explain:

It’s as easy as pressing a key when the language is being spoken-let’s say you’re trying to order some food in Spanish. It translates what you say into the phone on the fly, and then reads the Spanish version out loud, so the waiter can understand. They can then respond in Spanish, and the phone will convert it to English, speaking it out loud.

It’s only English and Spanish for now but you know more will be coming. Free.

ATM Hunter: I hate it when I can’t find a good ATM and am forced to cash out at some seedy liquor store that sells FourLoko in the back room. With MasterCard’s new app, ATM Hunter, you can find specific bank ATMs, surcharge-free ATMs, 24-hour ATMs and even wheelchair accessible ones near you. Users can even add ATMs to the app too. Free.

Kongregate Arcade: You get over 300 different flash-based games on your phone for free. Some of them have to be good! Oddly, it got pulled from Android Market but can still be had on their site directly. Requires Android 2.2 with Flash installed. Free.

Jet Car Stunts Lite: It’s the free ‘lite’ version of the full $2 app but it has 8 courses that aren’t in the full version, so it’s almost like an expansion pack. It’s a racing game that’ll track your fastest time so you can brag to your friends. Quick and pretty damn addictive. Free.

SeamlessWeb: The president of the SeamlessWeb fan club is without question Gizmodo’s Sam I Am Biddle. And he’s a pretty smart dude! So if you’re in one of the 14 cities where SeamlessWeb makes it dough, take Sam’s advice and use the SeamlessWeb Android app to make all your future food orders. The app will use GPS to find delivery-friendly restaurants nearby. Then you can check out restaurant ratings, cruise through menus, and place your order for delivery and make Sam happy. Free.

ABBYY Business Card Reader: As old school as business cards are, people still love handing ‘em out! But what to do with them when you get them? Type in the info? Uh, no. Use ABBYY’s Business Card reader to take a picture of the card and let it do all the legwork for you. It uses OCR software to work its magic. $10

NASA Spinoff: See everything that NASA has done in one purple Android app. Gary says:

If you can live with the app’s bizarre purple layout-inspired by the Crab Nebula?-there’s a good amount of content in here. A timeline of NASA innovations is good for boning up on what it’s been up to since it was founded in 1958, plus there’s a simple Google Maps tab showing where many NASA inventions can be found around you today. Plus there’s an occasionally updated news feed.

Booty Symphony: Quite possibly the awesomest combo ever: T-Pain and butts. Kyle eloquently explains T-Pain’s Nappy Boy’s Booty Symphony :

It’s not as crazy as it sounds! Just tap the various booties on the booty soundboard-including snippets from Nappy Boy songs like Tay Dizm’s “Point Em Out” and Young Cash’s “I’m a Freak”-to create a short, stimulating 30-second video. OK, maybe it’s more crazy than it sounds.

Ah-mazing in an app. Free or $3.

Send an email to Casey Chan, the author of this post, at cchan@gizmodo.com.

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Why You Learn More Effectively by Writing Than Typing

Why You Learn More Effectively by Writing Than Typing: "

The act of writing helps you clarify your thoughts, remember things better, and reach your goals more surely. Here’s a look at the science and psychology behind writing, and why the pen may be mightier than the keyboard.

Photo by sun dazed.

Many productivity experts and writers have long espoused the power of writing things down (in fact, paper is our many of our favorite to-do list manager and we’re a little fanatical aboutour favorite pens).

Why Writing Works

Patrick E. McLean’s defense of writing longhand is a poetic dissertation on the subject; words can rush out in their raw, feral state when the pen is your tool. Technology, meanwhile, can be too distracting and distancing.

Maybe you’re on the other side of the fence, though, and think all this just a lot of pure romanticism: People may feel more comfortable and productive with pen and paper because that’s what they’ve used most of their lives (and what we as a species have used for centuries), but some like typing more and can do it more quickly. Certainly, more of us are becoming fast typists by necessity and the art of handwriting is deteriorating.

A couple of studies, though, substantiate why the physical act of writing really does boost learning and goal achievement. Hoping to provide actual scientific proof on the efficacy of writing down and sharing goals (to make up for an often-quoted mythical Harvard/Yale study of goals), a psych professor at Dominican University of California found that people who wrote down their goals, shared them with others, and maintained accountability for their goals were 33% more likely to achieve them, versus those who just formulated goals. (One can argue that in this instance, typing would be equally effective; see “Why Writing Works Better Than Typing” below for why writing still may be better.) Another study found positive effects of writing on learning foreign words, and a survey of note-taking studies found several examples where taking notes helped students with recall and academic performance.

The research results may seem common sense or obvious to many of us. If you’re interested in the biology behind writing’s effect on our achievements, though, here’s a little background: Writing stimulates a bunch of cells at the base of the brain called the reticular activating system (RAS). The RAS acts as a filter for everything your brain needs to process, giving more importance to the stuff that you’re actively focusing on at the moment—something that the physical act of writing brings to the forefront. In Write It Down, Make It Happen, author Henriette Anne Klauser says that “Writing triggers the RAS, which in turn sends a signal to the cerebral cortex: ‘Wake up! Pay attention! Don’t miss this detail!’ Once you write down a goal, your brain will be working overtime to see you get it, and will alert you to the signs and signals that […] were there all along.”

Why Writing Works Better Than Typing

There may also be a scientific basis for the pen’s superiority over the keyboard when it comes to writing development and cognitive functions. Dr. Virginia Berniger, who studies reading and writing systems and their relationship to learning processes, found that children’s writing ability was consistently better (they wrote more, faster, and more complete sentences) when they used a pen rather than a keyboard; these are, of course, subjects without a penchant for using either tool. We also previously covered the WSJ article that connected handwriting and cognitive abilities; in one of the studies cited, adults learned new symbols and graphic shapes better when they reproduced them with pen-and-paper instead of typing them.

The difference, Berniger notes, may lie in the fact that with writing, you use your hand to form the letters (and connect them), thereby more actively engaging the brain in the process. Typing, on the other hand, involves just selecting letters by pressing identical-looking keys.

Of course, whether the pen or the keyboard is better for you depends on your personal experience and comfort with these tools. As a compromise, perhaps we should all get stylus-friendly tablet PCs or digital pens.

The author of this post can be contacted at tips@lifehacker.com

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Star Wars Leather Wallets

Star Wars Leather Wallets: "

We know as a faithful fan of Star Wars, you have many ways to keep your favorite characters around you, for instance leather wallet themed by Star Wars just like the following two.

As we can see from the image, these are two Star Wars themed leather wallets officially licensed by Lucasfilm. Each wallet measures 8.5 x 3.5 inches, and is made of genuine leather, and lined with nylon. The two wallets feature silk screened artwork themed by Darth Vader, Stormtrooper. Besides, same as normal wallet, the Star Wars leather wallet comes with enough room for your dozens of bills, and four small pockets for your credit cards.

The Star Wars leather wallet is priced at $19.99 USD. If you’re interested, jump to ThinkGeek for more detail, Additionally, if you need more Star Wars themed gadgets, you might like to check Death Star cookie jar, R2-D2 alarm clock, and more via tag “Star Wars”.

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