Reviewing the Top Android Social Media Apps of July 2014

Choosing the right social media app is a challenge for you, as today there are more social media apps compared to the no. of people using it. So, we have shortlisted some magnificent top rated Android social media apps of July 2014.

Facebook Messenger 

Facebook Messenger is completely free, reach your friends, colleagues, family instantly by sending free text messages. Create your own groups, include as many as friends, name the group and set your favourite pictures.

Shoot videos and selfies and share them right away with all your loved ones with just one tap. Free calling features across different countries over Wi-Fi (only the standard internet charges would apply).

Free | Download from Google Play

Plume

If you are a Twitter fan, then this app is for you. This is a customizable Twitter app that will revolutionize the way you use it. Plume serves as among the best Twitter app for android.

»  Let's check-out some of its features.

»  Multiple account support for Twitter

»  Customize your timeline for Twitter

»  Live Streaming Support

»  Vivid scrollable widgets to display on your timeline.

»  Preview picture in timeline, also can enlarge the view

Free | Download from Google Play

HootSuite

HootSuite renders you to manage all your social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Fourscore and more, from one single app. Hootsuite has user base of over 9 million, and it provides upto 3 free social media profiles to be synced.

It also provide a feature to track down your social media analytics. Publish and share all your photos and videos in all the social media profiles at once.

»  Let's Explore some of its features

»  Managing multiple accounts from a single spot.

»  Autoschedule your posts to get published at your desired time.

»  Shortening of links and tracking the stats via analytics report.

Free | Download from Google Play

Pinterest

Pinterest possesses biggest collection of everyone's favourite things. Pinterest provides you ideas for various projects of you interests as it has a huge customer base.

Pinterest delivers project ideas such as car restorations, interior decorations, designing your garden and more.

Pinterest is the home of the biggest collection of your favourite things – gifts, quotes, make-up tips, tattoo ideas, latest technologies and more.

Create your own board by syncing all your creative ideas and posting them on your board. After installing the app, just surf the web and if you find anything interesting, simply share it on your board.

Free | Download from Google Play

eBuddy XMS

eBuddy XMS app provides you free unlimited messaging service. Send messages the way you want, send text, images, quotes, emoticons and more.

The only thing XMS needs is an internet connection, else it's totally free. Share messages directly with your XMS contacts.

Free | Download from Google Play

Want to get developed your own social media app for Android users?

CLICK HERE

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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Mercedes' Reveals Its Semi-Auto Truck Giving Relaxation to the Driver

Mercedes-Benz has eventually built a semi-autonomous truck that provides long-haul truck drivers a sign of relief as they get anticipated time for other better moves.

It's the experience done by all, as when we travel on long distance highways, it gets too monotonous sometimes and specially for big rig operators, who spend most of there time on uneventful highways with no recreational activities.

This future truck 2025 was recently demonstrated on the reins of the highway. It's a semi-autonomous vehicle powered by the combination of radars and stereos, to keep the vehicle on the course once the speed is achieved, allowing the driver time to relax and check on other work.

Want to Know More About This Semi-Autonomous Truck? - Check This Video

 The vehicle has other functionality like, it can communicate with other vehicles to get the information about traffic jams or road construction. It's too smart to check an incoming speeding ambulance and give way to it.

It's a very realistic attempt by Mercedes, and some of it's planned technology is already used in its S-class sedan. The future truck doesn't possess advanced technology such as Google's self-driven car, but can surely provide a great deal of comfort to truck driver's, barely moving their hands off the steering wheels.

Source:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/06/mercedes-semi-autonomous-truck/

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm Hidden Brains specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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Exploring the Best Android Smartphones of July 2014

There are some best Android smartphones currently available in the market. Our expert analysts have shortlisted and showcased the top ranked Android phones with the best prevailing configuration.

Amazon Fire Phone

Amazon Fire Phone is unique device with several functionalities alongwith the gaurantee of Amazon ecosystem. This phone provides 4.7-inch screen, an ultra bright display, best suited in bright sunlight. It also features a glare reducing effect known as "Circular Polarizing". Amazon Fire Phone is currently the best Android smartphone in the market.

It also features F2.0 lens with an amazing low-light picture taking capability, outcasting big companies such as Apple and Samsung.

Specifications:

»  2.2GHz Quad-core processor

»  Adremo 330 GPU

»  1,280 x 720 IPS retina display, 4.7-inch with 315 pixels-per-inch

»  Scratch-resistent Gorilla Glass 3 with rubber frame

»  13MP rear-facing camera with F2.0 five element lens, optical stabilization and full HD video at 30FPS

»  32/64GB internal storage

»  Dynamic Perspective sensor system with invisible infrared illumination, gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer, barometer, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor

»  Fire OS 3.5

»  Four 120-degree field-of-view front-facing cameras with IR illumination.

»  2400mAh battery, 22 hours of talk time, 285 hours of standby, 11 hours of video playback

Samsung Galaxy Note 3

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is a flagship phone of Samsung's successful Galaxy Note series. It's the best among all the phablets, it also supports Samsung's new Galaxy gear smartwatch.

The only point that makes it bit downward is that, it gives a plasticky feel and seems very cheap in hand.

Specifications:

»  Android 4.3 Jelly Bean

»  3GB of RAM

»  2.3GHz Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor

»  13MP rear camera, 2MP front camera

»  4G LTE

»  NFC

»  32/64GB internal storage

»  MicroSD card slot for expansion

»  3200mAh battery offering 21 hours of talk time, up to 420 hours of standby

Sony Xperia Z Ultra

This smartphone has a lot of cool features including the sharpest display panel in the market. It also has a 13-megapixel camera with a capability of capturing high-definition videos.

This handset is among the thinnest devices in the market with a tough and slender body, featuring tempered glass with dust and waterproof protection.

Specifications:

»  Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

»  2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor

»  6.4-inch TFT display, with Sony's Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2 with 342 pixels-per-inch

»  8MP rear-facing camera, 2MP front-facing 1080p HD video capture

»  16GB internal storage

with a support of Sony SmartWatch 2

»  3050mAh battery offering 16 hours of talk time, up to 820 hours of standby

LG G3

LG G3 is moving forward after the success of G2 and is ready to take on Samsung devices. LG has made several changes in G3, that people demanded such as adding a microSD card slot, removable battery and many other changes. LG G3 possess all the qualities that a best Android smartphone should have.

Specifications:

»  Android 4.4.2, KitKat OS

»  2.5 GHz quad-core 801 Qualcomm Snapdragon processor

»  5.5-inch QHD IPS display featuring 534-pixel-per-inch

»  13MP rear camera, 2.1MP front camera

»  16/32GB internal storage

»  MicroSD card support

»  3000mAh battery offering 21 hours of talk time, up to 550 hours of standby

Google Nexus 5

Nexus 5 owners can feel the puriest form of Android experience and delivers Android 4.4 Kitkat. The owners of this handset will get the update directly from Google and no need to wait for the hardware OEMs.

Specifications:

»  KitKat OS, Android 4.4

»  2.23GHz Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor

»  4.95-inch, 1920x1080 display with 445 pixels-per-inch

»  8MP rear camera, 1.3MP front camera

»  16/32GB internal storage

»  2300mAh battery life, providing 17 hours of talk time and almost 300 hours of standby

Let me know about your views on these top rated Android Smartphones in the comment section below.

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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WordPress Web & Plugins Development – A Beginners Guide

WordPress CMS has changed the way in the field of web development providing new, innovative and prosperous ideas to developers. Today WordPress development is used in several ways benefitting all sort of businesses.

WordPress is among the best platforms to create your own plugin and enhancing the functionality by placing it in your blog. Plugins can be placed anywhere in your blog. This extensibility provides a better growth to your blog in terms of visits and authority.

WordPress delivers special features for developing unique plugins. As a developer, you can get hold on your blog by developing specific plugins of your requirement. Hiring a professional PHP developer to develop WordPress plugin for your blog may cost you a lot more than you have imagined.

You can build your own plugins and sidebar widgets and get more tuned into deeper areas of WordPress CMS development. It's not just limited to WordPress, but you can also have more knowledge about other content management systems too.

An Introduction of WordPress Folder Structure

As shown in the picture, you can see the list of basic app directories. You'll find a wp-content folder, and within the folder, there is plugins directory. This plugins directory is the home for all the plugins.

If you want to create a small plugin with a single .php file, then it can be directly saved within the plugins directory, however if your file is bit complicated or consists of multiple .php files, then it's better to create a sub-directory named after your plugin.

You can also create a readme.txt file, as it's important if you are providing your file for downloading. As an author, you can also provide details about several sections of your file.

Let's Begin with Your First PHP File for WordPress Plugin Development

First of all you need to create a simple .php file for a new plugin. You can name anything to .php file, but it's a good practice to name it after your plugin's official name. The first few lines of your code should be information about that plugin and they must be placed in comments for the parsing engine. You can place your information as shown in picture below.

You can see the plugin's name within the admin backend panel at the time of activation. It's very similar to the URI placed within the details panel inside the plugins panel.

Best Practices for WordPress Naming Conventions

It's the best practice to create an entire plugin class system to avoid the conflicts between the names of variables and functions, but if you are not familiar with the OOP concepts, then you can write all your code within one sample file.

Now we need few variables to define, which are the key elements to be implemented inside our templates files. Check the example of our file provided below taken from our plugin file with all the core logic code removed.

It's a better practice to follow all the rules and regulations set by WordPress to avoid collisions. As there are many internal functions within the WordPress file, there are chances of having duplicate functions. Try to make a habit of prefixing a label to all the names of your variables and functions.

Role of Filters & Actions

Filters and Actions play a very important role in developing a WordPress plugin. These two concepts have an in-depth relation in manipulating the plugin data.

Actions and Filters are two standard codes that comes along with WordPress API. The developers can also modify the codes within the Filters and Actions to use it for their new plugin.

Acknowledging "Add_filter()"

A filter is a piece of data that is passed into WordPress, that allows a developer to easily filter content within your own written code to modify your data as per your needs. For example, you can use the filter to change the content which is availabe in WordPress as a variable set.

Filters provide an easy way to write plugins to customize the look and feel of your website. Filters are generally used for developing sidebar widgets and small functions to modify the looks of you blog post.

Acknowledging "Add_action()"

Actions are much similar to Filters, but instead of using bits of data, they target the pre-defined areas within the template and admin panel. Actions can be applied whenever you edit or change the content of a page. There are some predefined areas where you can target Actions, some of them are listed below.

• save_post – called when a post/page is created from start or updated
• trackback_post – called whenever a new trackback is added into a post
• loop_end – called immediately after the final post has been processed through the WordPress loop
• wp_head – called when the template is loaded and runs the wp_head() function
• publish_post – called when a post is published or when status is changed into “published”

Once you'll understand the difference between Actions and Filters, then you'll be able to create a comprehensive plugin for your blog.

Inputting Our Final Plugin Logic

Now we'll put our plugin code in the plugin file. The documentation provided to understand API comes in very handy and provides an excellent resource to developers. You may face some difficulties, if you're not comfortable with PHP language.

Add the function as shown in the picture below within your plugin's header comment, and this code can also be placed within your theme's function. The code provided is for a dynamic content based on limited range of characters.

Finally Install & Run the Plugin

Once you have completed with the code, you need access to the WordPress administration panel and browse the current plugin file for installation.

Conclusion

It's very important to know the basics to get started with WordPress development. The WordPress plugin development provides a great deal of functionality. You can try practicing these methods on your local installation of WordPress.

Want to develop your own WordPress application or plugin?

CLICK HERE 

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab S – Is It Really The Thinnest Tablet To Date?

Samsung has unveiled its latest tablet in the market "Galaxy Tab S" which is presently company's thinnest and lightest tablet. This new tablet has stunningly sleek design and display, and amazing security features.

It has been noticed that the market for tablets is slowing down, but the launch of this slimmest product may increase the value of tablets. According to statement by senior practice director for mobile devices at ABI Research, Jeff Orr, "We’re not seeing tablet shipments or sales decline".

Its features include a fingerprint scanner, list of secured apps for business purposes and its available in two sizes; 8.4 inches and 10.5 inches. Other features includes high resolution screen with AMOLED display.

According to Mr. Nguyen's statement, 

"Ultimately, consumers like something that looks nice, but they want something that fits their needs and applications,"

Galaxy Tab S is made up of plastic and it has a variety connectivity options such as Wi-Fi and LTE, it's available in 16/32 GB memory, expandable upto 128 GB. There's also a new software feature called SideSync that allows you to control your samsung device.

Still Missing Something?!! Watch This Video for More Information

The price of 8.4 inch device is likely $399, and 10.5 inch its around $499, both available with WiFi models.

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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Exploring the Split Screen Multitasking Feature in iOS 8 on Apple's iPad

In the first edition of iOS 8 beta, that was announced a couple of days ago, allows split screen multitasking on iPad, Earlier reported by 9to5mac, now he has hacked the iOS 8 code to work on the functionality, but only partially.

Recently, Troughton-Smith has released a video demonstrating how the iPad split screen functions on iOS 8 showing the simulation working on the iPad's split screen. 

Check-out This Video for More Information on Split-Screen Feature of iOS 8

As you can see in the video, there are two panels in the screen, one screen has Safari running on it, and other panel is blank. The blank panel is likely for other app to be loaded, but the simulator is still functioning to enable two panels working side-by-side on a single screen.

Another feature that you can see in the video is two finger swipe functionality to control the visible size of either apps in the split screen mode and that can also be adjusted according to the screen.

This split-screen feature for iPad was rumored one month ago, and it was also much expected to be an attraction at WWDC, a few days ago. The feature is still in progress, and thus it was not previewed by Apple in the developers conference.

About Anna Harris:
Anna Harris working as web content writer and a strategist for a major IT firm specialized in various mobile application development services for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and other operating systems.

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