The highly popular and addictive Bejeweled Blitz has been released for Android devices.

Bejeweled Blitz was originally a Facebook application which is developed and published by PopCap Games, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. It soon expanded into a downloadable game, based on the then-in-development Bejeweled 3 engine, due to popularity of the differences from Bejeweled 2 and its new graphics. (Wikipedia)

The goal of Bejeweled Blitz is to match gems and Multipliers in order to get the highest score possible in one minute. By connecting with Facebook, players can compete with others for a high score on leaderboards.

Game Features

• Boost your fun with Detonators, Scramblers and Multipliers.
• Match as fast as you can to earn Blazing Speed and blow gems away.
• Get a ‘Last Hurrah’ to pile up points even after your time expires.
• Feast your eyes and ears on high-definition graphics and sound, optimized for Android devices.
• Challenge your Facebook friends to beat your best score and dominate the weekly tournament leaderboards.
• Propel your score into the stratosphere with the power of Rare Gems — featuring every Rare Gem from the Facebook game.
• Feeling lucky? Play the Daily Spin each day for your chance to win 1,000,000 FREE coins!

- Download Bejeweled Blitz for Android
- Download Bejeweled Blitz for iOS
- Play Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook

         

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The Google Play store has several paid and free browsers for Android phones and tablets. Most phones come inbuilt with a browser. But, you have several options to choose from. I’ve tried out quite a few browsers trying to find the best solution. Here are five browsers for Android that I recommend.

Google Chrome

Google’s very own browser for Android. Chrome comes installed on the Nexus 7 and several other Android devices. You can sign in to Chrome across your devices to sync your open tabs, bookmarks, and omnibox data from your computer to your phone or tablet.

Download Google Chrome for Android

Firefox

Firefox for Android is the free mobile web browser from Mozilla. The official Mozilla Firefox android browser is easy to use, & customizable, with the latest security and privacy features to help you stay safe on the internet. You have many of the addons available for the mobile browser similar to desktop version.

Download Firefox for Android

Dolphin

Dolphin by far is my favourite browser. I have it installed on my Google Nexus and serves as my primary browser. The team claims it is up to 10x faster than the stock browser and 2x faster than Chrome and I can confirm it definitely is the fastest browser I’ve used! Like Firefox, there are several addons available for Dolphin which you get from the Play store.

- Download Dolphin Browser for Android
- Download Dolphin Browser Mini
- Download Dolphin Jetpack which is an addon for Dolphin that further speeds up the browser

Opera Mobile web browser

Opera has always been one my regular browsers, both for Windows and Mac. It’s extremely fast and easy to use. Opera Mobile is designed for fast connections to give you a full experience. If you’re looking for even more speed, check out Opera Mini which compresses data by up to 90% and is the best choice for slower or limited data plans.

- Download Opera Mobile for Android
- Download Opera Mini for Android

UC Browser for Android

UC Browser for Android provides you fast and smooth Web surfing experience. The browser is configurable which helps you adjust your way of browsing under different network connections, allowing you to reduce data costs and speed up page loading with compression. It has some cool features including night mode, screenshot support and inbuilt ad blocking.

If you have an Android tablet, get hold of the UC Browser for Android Tablet instead.

Which browser do you use on your Android tablet / phone? Do you use any version above that the ones listed above?

         

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Two days back I took the decision to move from All in One SEO to Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin. WordPress SEO automatically adds several new columns to the posts admin screen. Coupled with the columns that Jetpack adds, along with those added by my Top 10 and Where did you go from here plugins, I ended up with the post title column being one character long! To fix this view, I needed to disable the columns from displaying via the Screen Options dropdown available in every admin screen.

In this post, I’ll guide you through the screen options in the “All Posts” and “Dashboard” pages.

Screen Options on the All Posts screen

The All Posts screen is my main screen of entry into the blog. I have this bookmarked in all my browsers. Hence, it’s also essential for me to keep this clean with only those columns I need.

To configure this screen, click on Screen Options in the top right of your browser window, just below where your name appears after you’re logged in. Depending on which plugins you have installed, you’ll see something like this.

A standard WordPress install will give you the five options, i.e. Author, Categories, Tags, Comments and Date. The remaining options / checkboxes you see in the screenshot are added by the various plugins that I mentioned above my my WordPress installation. I didn’t need them all and to hide those columns, all I needed to do was uncheck the boxes above. I get the following columns in my Posts screen now.

The last option “20 Posts” lets you control how many posts should be visible on the posts screen. I’m comfortable with the 20 posts. However, depending on your requirement, you can choose to increase or decrease this.

Screen Options on the Dashboard

The Dashboard screen is usually the first screen that most users login to and it’s been designed to give you a quick view of everything that’s going on on your blog.

Many plugins will add their own widgets to the Dashboard and after a while you might end up with more widgets than you really care about. This is again where the screen options dropdown helps you clean the dashboard.

Depending on which plugins you have, you’ll see some or many of the widgets below.

The concept is exactly the same as the previous case. You can check and uncheck whichever widgets you don’t want. This helps speed up the dashboard slightly if you do tend to visit it often.

Other screens

I won’t delve into much detail of the Screen Options on the other screens, but the concept is the same. Each screen has its own options that allow you to configure the number of items that are detailed. So, go ahead and play around.

         

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Back in January, Jeffro announced that WPTavern may no longer be regularly updated. However, over the past few weeks, I’ve been following the new posts at the blog by the new owner.

And, yesterday WPTavern opened its doors to writers worldwide to contribute to making the website a highly successful WordPress community.

In the near future, WPTavern will become an authoritative website. It’s not about publishing 100 articles a day, but publishing content that is interesting and, providing research/back story to that content. I like to think of WPTavern as an ongoing diary as to what is happening within the world of WordPress. However I’m opening up this diary/platform to the community. There will be caveats of course such as all content passes before me before it’s published. Guest authors will receive a Contributor level account to make things easier for the author to manage their posts.

         

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Software and services today are increasingly being powered by the cloud. Services like Dropbox (aff.) or Google Drive allow you to save your files in the cloud and synchronise across devices.

This works great, but if you’re find yourself copy pasting information between your computer and mobile devices, then you’ll need to rely to services like Evernote. If you already have Dropbox, and don’t want to try anything new, then check out iDropCopy.

iDropCopy shares your copied data and links with your Apple iOS devices and Mac OSX using Dropbox file sharing service. iDropCopy service allows you to store 25, 50 or 100 copied items. For efficiency it tracks for duplicate copied items and ignores them.

To use the software you’ll need to download the app for your iOS device and the software for your Mac OSX.

Copy the normal way you do on your Macs (cmd+c) or iOS devices and iDropCopy service will automatically copy to your other devices. With auto copy to clipboard enabled all you have to do is copy an item on one of your device’s and iDropCopy service copies that item to other device’s clipboard. There is nothing special you have to do, it works seamlessly without any effort.

iDropCopy service on Mac OSX by default checks every second for newly copied items. iDropCopy settings does allow you to change the sync time interval per iOS device. Also it provides a manual sync setting for your iOS devices that you want to control the copied data manually.

- Download iDropCopy for your iOS device
- Download iDropCopy for your Mac

         

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We are excited to announce that ThemeFuse has been thoughtful enough to share 3 WordPress themes licenses with our lucky readers. There’s nothing like free stuff to brighten your day!

The winners of this exciting giveaway will have the chance to choose their favorite ThemeFuse theme, and download it completely free of charge. This is an extremely valuable opportunity if you are, or are planning to, use WordPress to power your website.

We will be distributing 3 ThemeFuse vouchers. This is how you can get yours:

Enter Now to Win

Step 1: Scroll down this page and add a comment to this post.

In your comment, tell us how you plan to use your new free WordPress theme. Also, mention your Twitter ID / Twitter Status so that we can track your entry.

Step 2: Share this giveaway with your Twitter followers

Win a free copy of @ThemeFuse #WordPress Theme from @Techtites – http://goo.gl/a3kkq

Alternatively, retweet our Twitter Status.

Step 3: Like ThemeFuse Facebook page

Visit the ThemeFuse Facebook page and click the like button

One week from today, the winners will be announced. Check back often!

Advantages of Entering

ThemeFuse is arguably the best of the theme shops creating WordPress themes today. It does not matter what type of site you need, or what you need it to do, ThemeFuse likely has a theme that will exceed your expectations.

Users of ThemeFuse get attractive and creative designs, as well as source code that pays great attention to detail. To make the lives of users’ easier, they also provide an intuitive configuration interface that contains multitudes of great features.

If you do run into questions, there is a FAQ page, expansive online documentation, and a helpful support forum that provides vast information about the theme.

And by the way ThemeFuse has a cool new product launched in partnership with a trusted hosting company. They offer hosting that comes with a free domain and on top of that they do all the set up and handle all the installs for you for free. You’ll get your website in a matter of minutes. Find out more about this amazing product.

Below is a list of just a few WordPress templates within ThemeFuse’s large catalogue.

HomeQuest – Real Estate WordPress Theme

This innovative real estate theme is perfect for established agents or those interested in building credibility in the industry.

NewsSetter – News WordPress Theme

NewsSetter is an extremely sophisticated magazine-style theme that is ideal for providing a wide variety of serious reviews.

Envision – Business WordPress Theme

Have complex needs for your website or blog? This highly complex WordPress theme has got you covered. It contains, shortcodes, 5 different sliders, along with many other creative features.

Interakt – Agency WordPress Theme

A modern web presence for agencies, corporate and business firms and last but not least creative studios.

Welcome Inn – Hotel WordPress Theme

This hotel-oriented theme has been designed specially with the hospitality industry in mind. It is available in ski resort and spa versions. Enjoy!

         

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Ever since the early days of Quake, Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike, I’ve loved online gaming, especially FPS. I’m currently trying my hand at Max Payne 3′s multiplayer (though I must confess I get fragged a lot more than I frag!).

So, when I came across Blitz Brigade, I had to give it a try. Created by Gameloft, Blitz Brigade is a free online multiplayer FPS game for Android.

You can become one of five highly skilled and totally badass classes and team up with other players to pound your enemies into the dirt and call them mean names.

Key features:

• Up to 12 players can battle online in multiplayer games
• 5 classes: Soldier, Gunner, Medic, Sniper, Stealth
• Control the battlefield in Domination mode
• Frag everyone from the opposing army in Deathmatch games
• Use 3 different vehicles for a tactical advantage in battle
• Fight with over 100 weapons, each made for a specific class
• Unique taunts and kill phrases for each character in the game
• Voice Chat to create your game plan in the heat of the action

Download Blitz Brigade from Google Play

         

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Over the past few years, YouTube has gained a strong presence in the video world. It’s one of those services that Google has bothered to develop versus others which have been neglected post acquisition.

Yesterday, YouTube announced the launch of paid channels as a pilot programme with a small group of partners that will offer paid channels on YouTube.

There are currently 53 channels available for subscription including Big Star with subscription fees starting at $0.99 per month. Every channel has a 14-day free trial, and many offer discounted yearly rates.

Check out YouTube Paid Channels

         

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Recently the folks at Secunia contacted me regarding a vulnerability in my plugin Contextual Related Posts.

Contextual Related Posts is a powerful plugin for WordPress that allows you to display a list of related posts on your website and in your feed. The plugin comes with a tonne of options and inbuilt caching that can possibly increase user retention.

This vulnerability was on the settings page of the plugin and opened up the blog to a potential cross site request forgery (CSRF)

The application allows users to perform certain actions via HTTP requests without performing proper validity checks to verify the requests. This can be exploited to change plugin settings and e.g. insert malicious script to pages or posts when a logged-in administrator visits a specially crafted web page.

Since then, I’ve been scouring the web for material on this and you might also want to take a look this article on crunchify for a solution. In this post, I’ll tell you what I did to fix the vulnerability. But first, let’s understand what’s CSRF.

Definitions

Cross-site request forgery

From Wikipedia, Cross-site request forgery, also known as a one-click attack or session riding and abbreviated as CSRF or XSRF, is a type of malicious exploit of a website whereby unauthorized commands are transmitted from a user that the website trusts. Unlike cross-site scripting (XSS), which exploits the trust a user has for a particular site, CSRF exploits the trust that a site has in a user’s browser.

Secunia classifies this as a “Less critical” vulnerability and it isn’t often that you’ll notice major CSRF exploits. However, you’ll want to fix your publicly plugin and theme to ensure that users do not open their blogs up to be exploited.

The quickest way to fix a CSRF vulnerability in your WordPress plugin is through the use of WordPress Nonces.

Nonce

From the codex, Nonce is used for security purposes to protect against unexpected or duplicate requests that could cause undesired permanent or irreversible changes to the web site and particulary to its database. Specifically, a nonce is an one-time token generated by a web site to identify future requests to that web site. When a request is submitted, the web site verifies if a previously generated nonce expected for this particular kind of request was sent along and decides whether the request can be safely processed, or an notice of failure should be returned. This could prevent unwanted repeated, expired or malicious requests from being processed.

Nonce is usually included in a hidden HTML form field or as a part of an URL and therefore sent with a request by submitting a form field or visiting a link. If a request is not verified, the web site could generate a new nonce in its response and prompt the user to intentionally confirm the repetition of the request. In WordPress, the response message is “Are you sure you want to do this?” by default.

And, the code…

In my plugin I made two key changes to the code in the admin.inc.php file. This is the file that displays the settings page, takes input from the user and updates the database.

The first change is the addition of this line of code just before the closing form tag.

<?php wp_nonce_field('crp-plugin'); ?>

wp_nonce_field() was a function introduced in v2.0.3 of WordPress and generates a hidden input field in your form. Here’s what you will see if you view the source of the settings page now:

<input type="<a>hidden</a>" id="<a>_wpnonce</a>" name="<a>_wpnonce</a>" value="<a>NONCEHERE</a>" />
<input type="<a>hidden</a>" name="<a>_wp_http_referer</a>" value="<a>/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=crp_options</a>" />

You won’t see NONCEHERE of course, but the actual Nonce.

Adding the nonce field is the first key step, but is essentially useless unless you validate the nonce. This is where check_admin_referer() comes in. You’ll spot on line 20, an additional check that I have added.

if ( (isset($_POST['crp_save']) ) && (check_admin_referer('crp-plugin') ) ) {

WordPress will now check the POST request for the presence of the nonce field. If you’re hitting the save button on the Settings page you’ll never trigger an error. However, if you’re a victim of a CSRF, WordPress won’t be able to validate the nonce and will display “Are you sure you want to do this?”. It won’t process the request and won’t make any changes to the database.

Conclusion and additional reading

I’ve explained to you above one quick implementation of WordPress Nonces which can help prevent CSRF vulnerabilities in your WordPress plugins. Implementing this in your themes is along the same lines.

If you’re plugin is generating a form, then you should use a nonce to validate the input. It’s the first line of defence that WordPress provides you.

Other useful resources

• WordPress Codex on Nonces
• WordPress 2.0.3: Nonces | Mark on WordPress
• Capabilities and Nonces | Wptuts+
• Introduction to Using Nonces in WordPress (YouTube video)
• Improving security in WordPress plugins using Nonces | Prelovac.com

         

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The team at Leawo are inviting users to give their Blu-ray Player software a test run and in return you can get the software for free.

Leawo Blu-ray Player is all-inclusive media player software to play back Blu-ray/DVD disc, common videos and up to 1080P HD videos smoothly on Windows 8. The software also supports Microsoft® Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

The software has an easy to use program interface that provides many playback options as well as adjusting subtitles and audio tracks. It also provides full navigation for Blu-ray, DVD and video playback with the full menu of the source discs for users to play the main movie, select scenes, play bonus features of the movie, etc.

Key features:

• Play back Blu-ray, DVD and video content smoothly, up to 1080P HD movie playback supported;
• Life-long free DVD player and video player to play DVD, common video and HD video for totally free;
• Adjust subtitles and audio tracks for better movie experience at will
• Support full-screen playback for better visual effect
• Full menu for playback control to enjoy video, DVD and Blu-ray friendlier
• 100% compatible with Windows 8 OS supported

Download and test Leawo Blu-ray player

         

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iPhone and iPad users have enjoyed Siri for a long time. It’s a good alternative to typing out those boring phrases and also be good fun if you’re bored and just want to chat to your phone.

Android and Windows users haven’t enjoyed a feature as good as this. Google Now is a good option for Android users. But, I’m sure you want more.

Maluuba is the most advanced voice based personal assistant on Android that allows users to speak naturally to find restaurants, businesses, events, and organize their calendars, reminders, and alarms.

Maluuba currently supports 18 different categories ranging from entertainment  (restaurants, movies, local events, music) to social (facebook, twitter) to organization (calendar, call, email). In order to provide all the above information, Maluuba has partnered with industry leading content providers like Yelp, Google Places, Wolfram Alpha, Youtube, Facebook, Wikipedia and many more.

I gave Maluuba a test run to find restaurants,  movies near my house in London and it did a pretty good job of the same. I tried different combinations of words and phrases.

Features:

• Custom Widget to ask Maluuba for help straight from your home screen
• Hungry? Search for restaurants with Maluuba with questions like “Where can I get a cheeseburger?”
• Get directions to places you’re looking for
• Shop in Maluuba with queries like “Show me some great skirts that cost around $50″
• Ask for movie showtimes and watch trailers through the app
• Set Reminders easily! E.g. “Remind me to buy milk on Tuesday at 8pm”
• Create Alarms through voice like ‘Wake me up tomorrow at 8am’
• Ask general, knowledge questions and get exact results
• Connect to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare
• Ask queries like ‘where can I get a toothbrush?” or ‘where can I practice yoga?”

- Download for Windows Phone 8
- Download for Android
- International version

         

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In 2012, an EC study revealed that only 39% of people in the UK can speak another language. The story isn’t different in many other countries either.

But, there is great enthusiasm to learn a foreign language. If you’re an Android user, LingLing attempts to help you in this task.

Features

• Learn by playing an exciting and beautiful game in HD
• Create your avatar from over a billion of combinations and go with him through this amazing adventure
• Discover all the secret Achievements and hidden bonuses
• 20 times faster learning than traditional methods – 750 new words each month
• Database of 21.000+ Words in 3 difficulty levels, and still growing (1,500 for free)
• Already translated into 18 languages (English, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Tagalog, Hindu, Chinese, Ukrainian, Thai, Polish, Italian, Indonesian, Turkish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic)
• Compete with other people – Challenge your friends
• Share your progress – show people how fast you are becoming better each day!

The apps are completely free and you get 1,500 words for free. You can buy additional language packs. Learning a language by playing games definitely makes it a lot more interesting and fun. It will require you to have a good level of dedication to learn a few words a day.

Download LingLing apps

- English, Spanish, Thai, German, French, Chinese
- Other LingLing apps

         

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You can get the most out of your iPad by being in on the handy tricks and shortcuts that the savviest iPad users know about. Here are six things you can do with your iPad to use it more efficiently.

Double Tap Spacebar

When typing with the on-screen keyboard, you can double tap on the spacebar to add a full stop. That’s an old term from the days of typewriters, but it basically means you’ll get a period and a space at the end of your sentence.

Quick Volume Mute

Have you ever turned on your iPad and discovered that the last person who used it left the volume all the way up? Press the volume down button and hold it for a second; it will jump all the way down to mute instantly.

Take a Screenshot

If you ever want a screen capture of your iPad’s screen, hold down the Home and Power buttons at the same time. You’ll know it worked when you see a flash and hear the camera shutter sound effect. The picture will be under Photos.

Find Text on a Page

To find text on a webpage in Safari, type the text you want in the search bar, and then look for “On this Page” at the bottom of the drop-down list. Tap on that, and you can scroll through all the instances of your search term on the page.

Beyond the .com Key

The .com key on the on-screen keyboard is handy, but if you’re visiting a site that doesn’t have a .com address, you can hold down the .com key and it will expand to let you choose from several other common domains by sliding your finger across it.

Use Your iPad as a Digital Photo Frame

When your iPad is locked, notice the flower icon to the right of the “slide to unlock” bar. Tap the flower icon, and you’ll get a slideshow of all your photos. You can choose which photos to use in the slideshow in Settings.

         

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I love racing games. I blogged about Real Racing 3 a few weeks back and yet another really good drag racing  game is CSR Racing.

Race your dream car in the ultimate test: a drag race along deserted city streets. CSR Racing combines stunning, high-fidelity graphics with addictive gameplay to create a new type of racing experience.

The game boasts of a wide range of cars from Audi, Bentley, BMW, Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford, GM, Mini, McLaren, Pagani, and Nissan; incl. Audi R8, Ford GT, Chevrolet Camaro, McLaren MP4-12C, Nissan GT-R and BMW M3.

Choose from turbos, engine stages, ECU tweaks, racing tires and much more to strategically upgrade your car to fit your driving style as well as custom license plates, custom paints and original custom decals.

Lastly, fight the crews that currently rule the city, beat their best drivers and the bosses to take over the district.

Video:

Download

- Download CSR Racing for iOS
- Download CSR Racing for Android

         

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We’ve rarely felt the need for charts here at Techtites. However, if you’re frequently running polls or displaying statistics or just simply trends, you’ll find a frequent need to display charts in your blog posts.

Powered by HTML5 the Chart.js library allows you to add charts to your posts. If you pour over the documentation on Chart.js, you’ll see that integrating this on your blog does take a bit of work.

WP Charts is a new WordPress plugin brings you this power with a simple use of WordPress shortcodes.

WP Charts lets you create six different chart types including line charts, bar charts, radar charts, pie charts, polar area charts and donut charts.

e.g. entering the following will create a pie chart.

[wp_charts title="mypie" type="pie" align="alignright" margin="5px 20px" data="30,50,100"]

Check out the Installation instructions on what options you have available via the use of shortcodes. The author is working on a better interface of integrating a button that lets you add these shortcodes quickly and painlessly through an intuitive interface.

Download WP Charts from the Repository

         

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In today’s technology driven world you’ll most likely be on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Throw in Whatsapp, Google Talk and other messaging services and you’ll most likely be busy shifting apps to keep in touch.

If you have an iPhone, then you can get hold of SociaLink App.SociaLink is a the most efficient way to send and receive friend and follow requests.

SociaLink allows two people with the app to friend or follow each other instantly and in-person on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. If someone doesn’t have the app, instantly share your social media profile links as well as a link to download SociaLink by using the ‘Email’ feature.

SociaLink is meant specifically for people who enjoy networking and meet lots of people, but the app can be used by anyone using social media.

Learn how to use SociaLink App via this video:

- Download SociaLink from the App store

         

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After the events of Iron Man 3, Tony has become a peacekeeper, but new threats emerge regularly all around the globe and Iron Man is the only one who can take care of them.

Now, get the official Iron Man 3 app and play as Iron Man to battle villains across Malibu Shores, New York City and China.

Become Iron Man as never before

• Complete various missions in fast-paced flying battles and epic one-on-one confrontations
• Unleash Iron Man’s superpowers with amazingly responsive swipe controls
• Enjoy an outstanding 3D world with cutting-edge graphics and animations
• Confront 4 epic villains from the Iron Man comics: Crimson Dynamo, Ezekiel Stane, Living Laser and the mighty M.O.D.O.K

Command Stark Industries

• Research and develop up to 18 suits from the different movies (MARK II, MARK 42, Silver Centurion, etc.)
• Upgrade your armours and powers in the research Lab to wipe out your enemies

Video

Download

- Download Iron Man 3 for Android
- Download Iron Man 3 for iOS

         

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You’ve carefully chosen a niche market that appeals to your blog readers. It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging directly to consumers or to other businesses in and out of your niche. You faithfully and consistently post new, interesting blogs complemented with high-quality images. You know a little bit about search engine optimization (SEO) and are on the fast track to monetizing your blog. That’s great news, but if you’re not incorporating social media into your blog, you’re missing out on a huge market. You’d be surprised at the number of blogs who do not optimize their blogs for social media.

Just like small businesses, any type of blog can get a big boost from social media. This might include the biggies like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, but, depending on your blog, there are a slew of lesser-known social media sites you might benefit from. This doesn’t mean you use your existing personal social media to gain new readers (although you can also do that). It means creating a new social media presence just for your blog.

Finding Your Social Readers

Let’s say you’ve created a blog all about swimming, plunge pools, flotation therapy and other related topics. Maybe your latest blog covers the benefits of plunge pools and the best types for different people. If you’re not actively sharing this information and encouraging others to share, you’re simply hoping for the best and that people will stumble upon your blog. That’s not the best marketing strategy.

Keep in mind that your blog has many similar traits to a small business. You need to market your services, in this case your blog, and draw your readers out of the woodwork. Create a social media site where you imagine your readers are. Now it’s time to find like-minded people, such as those who like other swim or pool-related sites, and encourage them to like you. This calls for a little temptation.

Getting People to Follow or Like You

The easiest way to get someone to like you or follow you is to offer an incentive. For bloggers, this means it’s the value of your blog alone. Don’t just write a blog for the sake of doing so. Gather truly interesting, shocking or useful information. Present it clearly, complete with a video or quality infographic, that’s designed to get people to share it.

If your blog allows for an incentive such as having a winning follower featured, or if you have something tangible to give away, do so. The goal here is to go viral, and you need to pique some interest. While in this stage it’s important to stay in everyone’s good grace, it’s equally important not to flood people’s newsfeeds. This can get an unlike or have your posts hidden.

You must also make sure that your posts on your actual blog are easily shareable on both desktop and mobile devices. Having easily accessible and visible sharing buttons to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+ is imperative to your blog’s social media success. If you have an awesome post with viral potential, but don’t have shareable buttons on the post, your blog post will most likely be forgotten.

Check Your Time

By now, you know that having a blog takes a serious investment in time and energy. Don’t underestimate the demands of social media. If you’re going to utilize social media to increase your blog readers, this will require the same consistent attention. No social media presence is worse than a spotty or neglected one.

Don’t sign up for every social media site you can find in an effort to win the numbers game. People can quickly tell if social media presence is genuine and they’re turned off by pages that aren’t up to par. You need to dedicate a little time each workday to updating your social media site, creating engaging posts and responding to comments.

Is It Really Worth It?

The short answer is yes, but that’s assuming you have the time and energy to give social media the attention is requires. Otherwise, how are you outreaching to potential readers? SEO is great, but that assumes people are Googling words that relate directly to your blog. Social media is a free, relatively easy way to connect with potential readers.

         

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Ever since the introduction of Google Keep, the tech world has been abuzz, as it usually is when Google introduces a new feature that is expected to compete with a highly popular company, program or app- in this case, it is Evernote.

When I first heard of Evernote, I must admit, I wasn’t impressed. There were already several great note-creating services around. It wasn’t until I tried it that I realized just how much more Evernote actually can do. And it has grown to be one of the most popular cloud services around. But Google has created what some have deemed the “Evernote killer”. It’s always hard to uproot a company that has strong roots in the ground, but Google is somehow always around the top when it comes to new programs and services. But does Google Keep have enough features to compare with Evernote? And can it uproot the foundation that Evernote has with its users?

Google Keep and Evernote features

Both Google Keep and Evernote have features that allow users to create quick notes and documents along with editing and revision features for documents and presentations. The software on each service allows checklists to be made and edited. They can also create and store images and audio files. Both have sync features between computers or mobile devices and the cloud, which enables users to access data and utilize the features of these two apps from anywhere. Evernote has better sync capabilities as it allows users to sync to a variety of devices. Both Google Keep and Evernote have features that allow transcription of audio speech files.

One of the largest advantages Evernote has over Google Keep is the tag feature. The ability to tag notes and images for fast and easy searching is one of Evernote’s most prominent features and the fact that Google Keep is lacking in this area is a huge deal. Google Keep does have a color code system for searching but in its current state, it pales in comparison to Evernote’s superior tag feature.

The Google Keep app is incompatible with some of the most popular phones, another move that is not going to help Google Keep overtake Evernote anytime soon. Evernote is compatible with Android phones and tablets and iOS phones and tablets, while Google Keep is currently not available for iOS or for Android phones or tablets unless they are using Android 4.0 or above.

Evernote currently only allows exportation of files to Evernote format or in HTML format. While Evernote doesn’t have a “save to PDF” feature, notes and documents can be saved to PDF by using the “print to PDF” feature on most Windows computers or by using a prominent cloud backup service such as cloudHQ, which automatically saves all Evernote documents into PDF or Microsoft Word format, whatever choice the user prefers.

Is Google Keep the Evernote killer?

Since the release of Google Keep, an Evernote executive says that the flow of new users has not slowed a bit, that they are still seeing an increase of around 100,000 new users per day, joining the 41 million users they already have. Google Keep currently has around 5 million users although that number has not been increasing at a significant level.

Another disadvantage Google Keep currently has is that while users can archive notes or place them on the home screen, Google Keep does not allow notes to be organized into specific categories or separate work spaces.

I am happy to see Google releasing a competing app for Evernote but in its current state, it simply lacks the features to be a threat to Evernote. Evernote has had the time to add new features, as well as tweaking existing features to create a mature app that appeals to a large fan base.

Will Google implement enough features in the future to overtake Evernote? Only time will tell but it’s something we will definitely keep an eye on. As Evernote has become the ultimate app for taking quick notes, creating documents on the fly, and creating complete presentations with audio and images, it will be a hard task to overcome that success. Google has the means to do, we will just have to wait and see if they do.

          

I played Paper Toss on my old iPod a few years back and loved it. And, when I saw that Backflip Studios had released Paper Toss 2, I just had to try it out!

Paper Toss 2.0 returns with a bigger and more fun environment. You no longer need to throw just paper balls, but you can choose from a wide array of items including crushed cans, bananas, tomatoes and more.

And, you no longer need to aim at that one waste paper basket. Throw them at your boss or your coworkers or the poor intern who keeps moving in his chair to avoid the projectiles.

Paper Toss 2.0 brings to you:

• Bananas, grenades and other new tossables
• Annoying co-workers to toss stuff at
• Moving targets and bank shots
• Brand new levels plus classic favorites
• Breakable, exploding office objects
• Power-ups to boost your scores
• Game Center leaderboards and achievements

A great way to spend your time this weekend and also during those dull moments in office.

Download Paper Toss 2.0 from the Play Store