Video Stream App Turns Your iPhone Into a Set Top Box for Your TV [Video]

Getting all those video files you've accrued on the big screen is perhaps the most pressing challenge of our time. The newly-updated Video Stream app will let you stream files and control playback with another iOS device, no AppleTV required. More »

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The Geek's Guide to Rebooting Your Kitchen [Video]

Making your kitchen more efficient isn't that different from hacking your workday—decide what you actually do, and trim the resistance to doing it. Here's how you can upgrade your kitchen with a pen, a few hours, and fairly cheap upgrades. More »

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CrunchGear Week In Review: Go With The Floe Edition

Here’s a selection of stories from the past week on CrunchGear: Cloud-Based Storage Coming To PS3 (But For A Premium)? Audi-Designed Carbon Skis: Want So Bad Just In Time For Trenta: Send Your Facebook Friends Starbucks Card eGifts So Why Should You Care About NFC? How The Glif Got Made: From Design To Sales In [...]

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Vid.ly offers cloud-powered universal video transcoding for free

Vid.ly, a one-stop shop for uploading, transcoding and sharing video content for all screen-sizes and devices, has just come online. You'll need a beta key to sign up, which you can freely obtain from Mashable, TechCrunch or hacks.mozilla.org.

In essence, Vid.ly simply lets you upload a raw movie, and await an email notification to tell you that the upload and transcode has been completed. You can watch the process if you like, but other than a progress bar and a cute "console" style log, there isn't much to see. Not only does Vid.ly generate 14 very different versions of your uploaded video, but it also gives you a universal embed code, which serves up the best video format for the end-user. Visit the Vid.ly link in Firefox, and you get an HTML5 Ogg Theora stream -- but if you visit with IE8, you get a Flash video stream. If you're curious, check out our test upload on your desktop and smartphone.

Vid.ly also has the rather neat ability to transfer files that are already in the cloud -- or on FTP dumps -- into the Vid.ly transcoder. There are plans to provide an API, so that you can skip the website entirely -- but that will require the 'pro' version, which isn't currently available.

The best thing about Vid.ly is that it just works -- but considering it's a sister site of the excellent Encoding.com, that shouldn't really come as a surprise. What you're looking at here is possibly the most useful application of cloud processing power yet, and judging by the interview at hacks.mozilla.org with Encoding.com's president, there's a lot of cool things still to come.

Gallery: Vid.ly, one-stop video transcoding for almost every device

Vid.ly offers cloud-powered universal video transcoding for free originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How to switch between your recently used apps on Android

This week's tips series is all about Android, highlighting some the operating system's built-in utilities, and better ways of getting stuff done. For other technology tips, check our Tips index.

Android is inherently capable of multitasking, and has a sophisticated mechanism for deciding which applications should be kept running in the background, and which should be killed to conserve system resources. That means Android keeps tabs on which applications are running, and when.

It turns out there's a simple way to tap into this mechanism: A long press of the Home hardware button on your device pops up an overlay screen showing the most recently-used applications. You can then just tap an application's icon to instantly switch to it. Handy!

How to switch between your recently used apps on Android originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kamikaze Blocks is an explosive Time Waster

When I write up a game, I usually have to classify it one way or the other: either it's an arcade-type game, or it's something more cerebral. Well, Kamikaze Blocks is one game that says, "why choose?"

The premise of the game is simple: It's a physics shooter, the type where you have to set off one or more explosive charges to blow all the blocks off the board. But what's unique about it is that you can choose whether or not you'd like to have a limited supply of shots every level. So if you want easy, arcade-style gameplay, you've got it - just use unlimited shots and blow those blocks off the board like there's no tomorrow.

On the other hand, if you're actually interested in a puzzle experience, simply select to have a limited number of shots, and there you go. Each level has a different quota of shots, depending on how complex it is.

Another thing I like about this game is the part where the fish eat the blocks once they've fallen off the stage. They make a really cute chewing sound!

Kamikaze Blocks is an explosive Time Waster originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 24 Jan 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LauncherPro for Android updated, brings fancy home screen transitions (video)

LauncherPro, the fan-favorite Android home screen replacement, has been updated! This is not the much-hyped complete rewrite of the codebase -- that's coming soon! -- but it does bring one of the most-requested features: home screen transitions.

Rather than tell you all about them, we've made a video that shows off the four new Compiz-like transitions -- it's embedded after the break. Suffice it to say, they're very, very sexy. And elastic-y. The other thing this update ushers in is even smoother app drawer scrolling, which is also shown in the video (though it really is hard to say, objectively, whether it's smoother than before!)

You can download LauncherPro from AppBrain, or scan the QR code after the break.

Continue reading LauncherPro for Android updated, brings fancy home screen transitions (video)

LauncherPro for Android updated, brings fancy home screen transitions (video) originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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