Boost your productivity with Pushbullet, which lets you view your phone's notifications and messages directly on your desktop PC. It means if you get a text message you can read it there and then without having to take your phone out of your pocket or bag. You can also quickly send files from your computer to your phone with only a few clicks, and if you regularly find that you email links to yourself just to open them on your smartphone, then you'll never have to do that again thanks to Pushbullet's link sharing features.
Android allows you to change your ringtones and notification sounds, but unless you're happy with the selection that comes with your phone you'll have to get some more onto it, which can be a bit of a pain. Zedge makes this easy, with a huge library of free ones that you can browse, sample and download. So you can change your ringtone to a dog barking in mere seconds. Or, you know, set it to something good. It also does wallpapers and even icons, allowing you to completely change the look and sound scheme of your handset. It suffers from sometimes intrusive adds, but it's free and full of content.
Formerly known as IFTTT, which stands for "if this then that" and handily sums up what this app does. It's a simple ethos that gives you a huge amount of options for making your Android device even smarter.
You can create simple statements such as "if any photo is taken then add them to Dropbox", or "if my location is home, send a text message to my partner saying "I'm home!"" which can also be shared with other IF users. You'll be amazed how much you can do with such a simple premise.
If you're anything like us your scanner is probably boxed up at the back of the shed, where it's been reclaimed by the elements. But, with a smartphone no-one really needs a scanner any more anyway.
Just download Tiny Scanner and you can use your phone's camera to snap a picture of any documents, then use the app's tools to crop them and scan them, so they look less like a photo and more like a traditional scan.
You can change the contrast, scan things in colour, grayscale or black and white and save the results as a PDF or image. So the gremlins at the bottom of the garden can keep your rotten scanner, which still leaks out ink every time you touch it.
If you've ever made or used a flip book then you'll be right at home with Animatic, because that's what is is, but in digital form. You use a basic selection of pens, pencils and other drawing tools to create an image, then vary it slightly across multiple frames. For example, changing the position of someone's legs in each picture, so that once you flip through it you get a basic animation with a sense of movement. Since this is an app and not a book the flipping is handled by the software, you just pick the speed and then export it as a video or a GIF which you can share on social media or through other apps. Art skills very much not included.
