breaks

Newsflash: AP needs a better app

AP News is a free, mediocre news-reading app for the iPad with a scrapbook-style interface and a surprisingly inefficient use of the iPad's screen space.

Articles appear as headlines with small photo thumbnails on scraps of paper, scattered spaciously across a linen background. You swipe to flip through stories in a given category (such as politics, sports, or health), or you can swipe across a column in the middle of the screen to switch between categories.

The screen is topped by local weather (in oversize Comic Sans, inexplicably), a large AP logo, and two large panels for viewing photos … Read more

Get your news from the grid

Skygrid is a fun-to-use, visually slick app for browsing through recent news from multiple sources.

Skygrid isn't tied to any particular news outlet, and you can't see much more than a short blurb and a thumbnail image for any particular story--so whether you're checking out a story from PBS NewsHour, CNET, TMZ, or WebMD, you'll have to click through to the source's Web site to read the whole story. Even so, Skygrid makes surfing the headlines fun, with a streamlined grid (of course) interface that lets you swipe through different sections and stories, with the … Read more

A better way to break the ice

Amazing Breaker is an arcade physics puzzler that challenges you to fling bombs into ice sculptures with a slingshot.

Amazing Breaker's slingshot schtick is not unique, but this app's combination of quick-playing levels, increasingly complex gameplay, and high-res graphics sets it above most physics puzzlers. In each new level, you slingshot a series of bombs up into an ornate ice sculpture, and you have to smash 90 percent of the sculpture to progress to the next level (smash 95 percent for two stars, 100 percent for three). The complexity comes in as you decide how and whether to … Read more

The 404 952: Where time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana (podcast)

Leaked from today's episode of The 404 Podcast:

HTC and Facebook pair up for the HTC Buffy phone, a Facebook-powered smartphone modified to use HTML5 as an app platform. The ESRB and CTIA will soon unwrap a cross-platform rating system for mobile applications. Science has spoken: sarcasm is for smarties, according to the neuropsychologists at USF. With Final Fantasy XIII-2 only a few months away, Square Enix proposes to release a new Final Fantasy game every year.… Read more

Should lying online be a crime?

Google lets you remove your Wi-Fi info from its location database, iTunes Match goes live, and the Department of Justice pushes Congress to make it a felony to use a fake name on a social network or lie on a dating-site profile.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

The 404 946: Where our hand is on Fire (podcast)

We're going hands-on with the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, released ahead of schedule to a few lucky customers today.

Also leaked from today's 404 podcast: Apple replacing original iPod Nanos, breaking up on Facebook, waging war on infographics, and tap-to-pay apps coming to Ultrabook laptops.

Also, a big congrats to CNET's Bonnie Cha, the new chief correspondent at Crave!

Stream the podcast on audio or video after the page break!… Read more

Take the Big Stretch Reminder

If you're reading this, there's a very high probability that you're what's known as a computer user, which Webster defines as "an individual at elevated risk for repetitive stress injuries (RSI)" such as carpal tunnel syndrome, not to mention other physiological stresses like eyestrain and neck pain. Your doctor and your mother will both tell you the same thing: you're spending way too much time in front of that computer, and you should take regular stretch breaks. That's where a tool like Big Stretch Reminder comes in. This simple, free utility interrupts … Read more

The 404 926: Where Siri ratted us out (podcast)

We didn't think it would take this long, but somebody finally exploited the iPhone 4S to catch a cheater using the new Find My Friend app on iOS 5.

The scary part of this story, though, is how easy it is to use GPS to lurk on your S.O. using Google Latitude or any one of these mobile spy apps.

In that same vein, today we're chatting about our favorite tech pranks along with the latest news headlines that include BlackBerry freebies, iPhone record breaking, cell phone bill shock, and a fishy story out of Sesame Street.

The 404 925: Where Justin is a son of a beach (podcast)

Bridget Carey just got back from the launch of the iPhone 4S at the Apple store here in Manhattan, so we pull her into the studio to tell us about all the kooks lined up for first dibs.

Despite all the problems users are experiencing with iOS 5 updates, everyone in line at the store left with a 4S, though Bridget tells us not many users were anxious to test out Sprint or Verizon's network. Where's Wilson today? Guess.… Read more

Nokia testing labs: Breaking phones to fix them

SAN DIEGO--Without a doubt, the biggest highlight of CTIA was spent in the company of fellow journalists touring Nokia's testing facilities here, otherwise known as the chambers of torture.

It's here that testing engineers inflict a variety of mechanical and chemical abuse on their electronic quarry. Make no mistake: destruction is the labs' principal goal.… Read more