All the CyanogenMod-supported LG Optimus devices. From left to right: 3D, Hub, Sol, One, 2X, Black, and Pro. (Found on Google Plus.)

As CyanogenMod skates past 1 million active users, making it by far the most popular custom flavor of Android around, one of its main developers has asked the Android community if there's interest in creating an app store for Android modders and their fans.

Koushik Datta suggested a marketplace designed for apps, ROMs, and emulators that Google refuses to host and carriers refuse to allow. Not surprisingly, the answer he got was resoundingly positive.

Dutta, also known as Koush, said in a Google Plus post earlier this month that the time was coming for an app store that specialized in rooted Androids. He's laid out a couple of goals for the project, including that it would be open to all custom ROMs, and not just the CyanogenMod ROM that he spearheads. He proposed that it host apps that have been removed or blocked from Google's Market, including one-click root apps, connection tethering apps, emul... [Read more]

The textbook section of the iBookstore launched today with eight textbook previews so people could see how they work on iOS devices.

In an Apple event this morning in New York, Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, took the stage to introduce iBooks 2, an update to the popular e-reader for iOS devices that adds textbooks.

As Apple's flagship e-reader, iBooks is already a crisp-looking app and storefront that runs on iOS devices. But today, iBooks 2 moves into the world of education by adding interactive textbooks with the aim of keeping students' attention (and certainly adding yet another revenue stream for Apple).

We decided to download a free preview version of E.O. Wilson's "Life on Earth" textbook to get a feel for the features (the preview comes with only two chapters). Navigating through chapters and sections of a textbook works great on the iPad. You swipe to switch chapters, or touch sections or pages to get right into the content. We think this will be useful for students who need to jump around through chapters. Once you're looking at a page, you also have touch options, such as a pinch, which shrinks a page, and slide, which returns it to the navigation area on the bottom of the chapter screen.

... [Read more]

This free iOS app makes discovering new recipes fun and easy.

At first blush, the Foodily iOS app appears to be a mobile Twitter-like feed for foodies. By following friends, famous chefs, and food bloggers, you get a feed of recipes, from which you can create a favorites list, comment on, or share via e-mail or Facebook. Where the app really shines, however, is with its search functionality, which helps you narrow your efforts in the vast sea of recipes online.

When you launch the app, you'll be asked to sign in via Facebook or e-mail. Choose the former, and you'll easily be able to post recipes you find on Foodily on your Facebook page and invite Facebook friends to join Foodily.

Foodily's feed gives you a running list of recipes from kitchen personalities, bloggers, and your foodie friends.

After signing in, the next order of business is to build your Foodily feed. Tap the people icon from the bottom menu bar and then tap the Suggested tab at the top of the screen. Here you'll find about a dozen food bloggers, authors, and for some reason, meat-loving comedian Rob Riggle listed. Tap the red Follow button to add them to your feed. If you go to Foodily's site, you'll find a few more people to follow who aren't listed in the iOS app.... [Read more]

Have you ever taken a 5-minute break from working on your computer only to find yourself lost in some dark corner of the Internet several hours later?

Popular Web sites are the bane of any would-be productive day's existence and, fortunately, there are ways to help. If willpower isn't your thing, there are lots of programs out there that can block access to Web sites. The problem with a lot of these programs is that you have to manually disable the block--if your conviction really falters your can still unblock it before your work gets done.

FocalFilter is a program for Windows operating systems that can block a user-generated list of Web sites for a specified period of time. The lock on these sites will persist until the time as elapsed, at which point you can extend the lock or unblock them.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Step 1: Download and install FocalFilter. 

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Step 2: Open the Windows start menu and type FocalFilter into the search box. Run the FocalFilter program the appears in the list.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Step 3: Click the Edit My Site List to open a new window containing the sites to be blocked. Add sites that you want blocked, one on each line. Click the Save button when finished.[Read more]

If you're looking to expand your font selections, Google's Web Fonts collection has you covered.

A lot of sites say they offer free fonts, but there's either a catch, or it's just a gathering of all the fonts that came standard on your computer. Google's Web Fonts hosts hundreds of fonts that you probably don't have, and lets you download them for free. Here's how to grab your favorites:

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Step 1: Head to http://www.google.com/webfonts in your Web browser.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Step 2: Adjust the filters on the left side to your liking by clicking on All categories in the drop-down menu.

This will let you filter fonts by things like serif (with handles), sans serif (no handles), or handwriting styles, and you can pick which script you'd like the fonts to support (i.e., Latin or Greek).

Step 3: Browse through the fonts on the right-hand side by scrolling down the page.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

You can adjust the example sizes you'll see for fonts from one word, a sentence, or even an entire paragraph by clicking on their respective tabs at the top of the page. Additionally, fonts can be previewed with different sentences, sizes, and even sorted by things like popularity or the d... [Read more]

Apple's new textbooks are in the iBookstore.

Apple didn't surprise anyone at its New York City event today, but the company did underscore its intention to make its market in education.

The company kicked off its event at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum today discussing the troubles American students are having competing against those in other countries. Apple, vying to be the hero, said it has some solutions to improve educational quality for students.

The first is iBooks 2 for iPad. The offering allows textbook makers to sell their titles to iPad owners for $14.99 or less. In a demonstration, Apple showed how interactivity stands at the center of its textbook push, allowing students to view videos and even 3D images from within a title. In addition, the textbooks support note-taking, flash cards, and highlighting.

Apple says iBooks 2 is designed to solve the major issues hurting today's textbooks--a lack of durability, portability, searchability and interactivity, not to mention outdated content.

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The HotSpot Shield VPN now incorporates an anti-malware site blocker.

HotSpot Shield maker AnchorFree has built an extra wall of protection into its popular virtual private network software, available today. The update adds a malware site guard to the VPN client without requiring you to download a new version of the program because the changes have all been made on the server, not on your computer.

With the anti-malware site guard in place, HotSpot Shield will throw up a warning like the one you see in the screenshot above. Available on Windows (download), Mac (download), and iOS (download), the new anti-malware site protection is based off a database of more than 3 million malicious sites. Between the three operating systems, AnchorFree says that HotSpot Shield has more than 10 million active monthly users. Since the site guard is implemented on the server-side, it will be available in the coming HotSpot Shield Android app, too.

For people who use the free, ad-supported version of HotSpot Shield, the new guard will block malware sites. If you upgrade to the ad-free and bandwidth-prioritized Elite version, you will also recei... [Read more]

Just some of the schools already using Apple's new iTunes U service.

Apple's iTunes U has received a major facelift.

The company announced today at its New York City education-focused event that iTunes U will now become a go-to hub for both students and professors at the college level. The service allows professors to post messages, send out assignments, and share syllabi.

On the student side, the application allows full access to course material, including video, documents, apps, textbooks, and other content. As one might expect, the service will have full integration with iBooks.

When new assignments pop up in iTunes U, students will be able to complete them and then mark them off from the iPad. A Notes section in iTunes U includes all the notes they might have taken on digital textbooks. The Notes tab also includes all the content that has been highlighted in the digital textbooks.

Lastly, Apple has also moved into the registrar space with iTunes U, allowing students to sign up for a class from their iPads with just a single tap.

The iPad iTunes U application is available for free. However, students won't totall... [Read more]

Apple's new iBooks Author software lets people create iBooks-compatible books from document files.

Although Apple's education event in New York focused on students, the company today also unveiled a new author platform.

Dubbed iBooks Author, the free Mac OS X application lets authors create textbooks and other books with simple drag-and-drop mechanisms. According to Apple, the application gives authors basic templates to quickly create titles that offer both text and interactive elements such as videos and images. To add multimedia content, iBooks Author lets users drag and drop content onto pages.

In deference to those who want to create more unique titles, Apple says folks who can code in JavaScript and HTML will be able to create custom widgets to enhance the interactivity of the books or textbooks. It also comes with a glossary function, promising to make that arduous task far simpler.

Of course, the most important element in any e-book is the text. So, to facilitate its transfer, Apple will let users drag and drop their chapters from a Word file into the appli... [Read more]

Apple's new textbook offerings in the iBookstore.

Apple this morning showed off digital textbooks at its education event in New York.

The service, dubbed iBooks 2, will allow textbook makers to create fully interactive titles for Apple's iPad. According to the company, users will be able to swipe across the display to open textbook pages and view movies within each chapter. The operating system's familiar pinch and tapping features are also available, giving users more interaction with titles.

It's the interactivity that Apple was focused on. The company says that kids will be able to see 3D images and rotate them to get a better feel for what, for example a DNA structure looks like. The books can also be switched between portrait mode and landscape modes to make text and images easier to interact with.

As with traditional textbooks, students can easily mark up titles from the iPad. Apple showed how kids can highlight text and add a note to a page. All those notes can then be combined to make study cards. Those cards, which are basically virtual 3-by-5-inch cards, let students put a topic on one side and the definition on the other,... [Read more]