productivity

Are you still flying solo instead of jumping on the Mailbox or Mailstrom bandwagon? That doesn't mean you can't get a little help from Astrid, your friendly squidface to-do list app, when using Gmail in Chrome.

Each time you read your Gmail, you may star or label some of the messages that you want to get back to. This is a great idea in theory, but messages can easily be forgotten. Instead, you can add a reminder to your Astrid that will keep up with your lack of focus on the Internet.

Here's how to get started:… Read more

A relatively minor update for the Nexus line of devices, Android 4.2.2, was released last week by Google. The update, which included various performance improvements, also included a change to the behavior of the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi tiles in Quick Settings.

To access Quick Settings, you simply swipe down from the top of your screen with two fingers. You'll see various tiles, all allowing you to quickly access their respective settings screen. New in the 4.2.2 update is the ability to long-press on the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth icons, toggling the state of the service.

It'… Read more

In the older version of Any.Do you had to schedule each task on your list individually. While this was effective in the sense that it set off notifications, it wasn't efficient. Luckily, the new Any.Do Moment feature creates a path between listing your tasks and getting things done by helping you plan out your day.

Before you get started, make sure you have the latest version of Any.Do installed on your device. You'll probably see an update, but if not, head to Google Play and grab the latest version.

Once you open Any.Do on … Read more

The biggest issue with any of the activity tracking systems, be it a Fitbit or Jawbone Up, is that some information has to be manually entered by the user. For example, when I'm tracking how much water I drink in a given day, I have to remember to enter it into the Fitbit app, and I'm horrible at it.

When the revamped Fitbit Android app launched last week, I came across another Android app called FitTap. FitTap combines Fitbit activity logging with NFC.

There's two versions of the app, one is free, but requires you to use … Read more

Bump is a popular app for sharing photos and contact info between smartphones. Several months ago, they added the ability to share photos with a computer as well, but you could only share photos in one direction (phone to computer). Bump's announcement yesterday revealed that you can now use the app to share any file type between devices in both directions. Here's how to use Bump to share files between your smartphone and computer:

Step 1: Install the latest version of Bump (iOS | Android) on your smartphone and enable location services.

Step 2: On your … Read more

Ever use Google to search for an answer and when you find it in the search results and click on the page, it's gone? How annoying. Another bothersome occurrence appears when a Web page layout has changed, and the information you usually find in a certain place is now moved somewhere else. For times like this, Google's page cache is amazingly useful. The results are not 100 percent guaranteed to show you exactly what you're looking for, but hey, there's not a whole lot of 100 percent anythings left in the world.

Before Google went through … Read more

Apple products will soon be showing up at Staples stores, according to tweets from employees at the office supply store chain.

Regis Mulot, the vice president of international human resources at Staples, made the announcement this afternoon:

After Canada, #Apple products arecoming to #Staples in US. Great news!

In addition to Mulot's tweet, Erin LaFlamme, a Strategic Accounts coordinator at Staples, tweeted her joy at the deal (and the apparent gift of Apple pie):

Thanks #Apple for letting #Staples sell you...oh, and for the delicious apple products to celebrate at... instagr.am/p/Vuezsgk6_t/… Read more

Dropbox is one of the top cloud storage solutions for anyone who needs to share or collaborate on documents, audio or images. As long as you have Internet connectivity, you can access your files from anywhere, giving you peace of mind that a specific file won't be forgotten when you're away from the computer.

If you're often saving documents or images from the Web, you may notice that the process isn't very streamlined on its own. You either have to use the Dropbox software on your PC and choose that folder every time you want to … Read more

The Samsung Galaxy S3 (and Note 2) has a neat feature when docked to a Samsung multimedia dock; it can automatically display the desk home screen. The desk home screen is a useful display with a clock, calendar, local weather and multimedia shortcuts. It's a nice companion display when you're charging your S3 at your desk. However, you don't necessarily need a dock to use the desk home screen.

If you're using a third-party smartphone stand with a separate charger, you can still make use of the desk home screen.

To use the desk home screen, … Read more