I've written about several iOS apps here that add effects to your photos, but most are just for adding a retro look, tuning your images, or making a photo look hip for the social networking sites. I've found some great ones like PhotoToaster, Photogene2, and SnapSeed, but there's another genre of apps that make even more drastic changes to your images.

This week's collection of iOS apps is about taking your photos to the extreme. The first turns your images into line-drawn cartoons. The second fills in your image with words to produce a thought-provoking effect. The third puts your image through a coffee grinder, and brews up a bubbly colorful mosaic.

Once in the painting phase, you can choose colors, paint them in yourself, or have the app do it for you.

ToonPaint ($1.99) turns your images into cartoon-like drawings and gives you tons of tuning options to make them look just how you want. You start by snapping a fresh photo or grabbing an image from your iPhone's camera roll... [Read more]

Sorry to burst your bubble, folks, but it is fully tax season. So, if you haven't gotten your W-2s, 1099s, and 1040s all compiled and organized, you best get moving.

In any case, here are a few tax apps that you should check out, no matter where you are in the tedious filing process. Download them and enjoy. They will definitely make your life a bit easier. And who knows? They might even make your tax-filing experience fun! Maybe.

TaxCaster (Android | iOS) If you're not quite ready to file, but you want to see what your return might look like, then download the free TurboTax TaxCaster app. It can quickly estimate your federal tax refund based on a few bits of personal info and some basic payroll data, and it can even factor in most (if not all) of your deductions.

At the top of the screen is a meter that displays your estimated tax refund. As you answer questions, it recalculates its estimate accordingly. And of course, the more answers you provide, the more accurate TaxCaster's estimate gets. Believe it or not, it's actually kind of fun to use.

One thing I love about the app is the simplicity of its questions. Sliders and radio buttons make it easy to enter your answers, and, most importantly, all o... [Read more]

While e-mail was never intended to be a file storage method, it often ends up being used that way. This design shortfall can lead to some infuriating searches for attachments you know are in your account.

Attachments.me wants to help you solve this frustrating problem. To get started, you need to visit Attachments.me on your computer, and sign in using your Gmail account. You will then be asked to grant the service permission to access your account.

After gaining access to your Gmail account, Attachments.me will index attachments in your Gmail account. Going forward, you can then visit the Web site, or install a browser extension (Firefox | Chrome) to quickly search and share your attachments.

Search in the standard Gmail search bar, as you have many times before, only this time your attachment results will be displayed as thumbnails above the standard search results. The key to remember when searching is that Attachments.me doesn't just look at the name of the file, it also scans the body of the e-mail for your search terms.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Cipriani)[Read more]

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

The standard battery icon on your Android can be a little misleading. The icons for 90% and 80% battery may look the same, just like 15% and 5%. If you want a more detailed meter for your device's charge, check out ChargeBar for Android. This app puts a small bar along top or bottom of your screen that indicates the percentage charge of your device. It's easy to use and customize, read on to learn about it.

Step 1: Download and install ChargeBarChargeBar - MIUI Battery Bar.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Step 2: Run the app and examine the configurable options.

While the default settings are sufficient, you might consider changing the bar color, size, and enabling startup on boot. The actual indicator bar can be placed at the top of the notification shade, as a separator between the notification shade and the rest or the screen, or at the very bottom of the screen. You can also adjust whether the bar shows on the lockscreen, or while you're using full-screen apps.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Step 3: Press th... [Read more]

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Even if you love reading those longer articles on the Web, sometimes you have to pause to take care of other things--like going back to work from lunch. Because of reasons like this (and the large list of other interruptions you may encounter), a developer created an extension for Chrome that will let you mark the last line(s) you read. When you come back to the e-book, review, opinion article, or even research materials, you can pick up your reading from right where you left off.

The youRhere extension for Chrome.

Step 1: Get the youRhere extension.

Step 2: Once installed, head to a page you want to read on the Web.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma)

Step 3: Double-click on the line where you want to leave a marker for later. The text will become highlighted in yellow.

When you're ready to get back to your reading:

The list of saved markers will appear after pressing the extension button.

(Optional) Step 4: Click the button for the extension to... [Read more]

Microsoft, Google, and Netflix have proposed a standard for copy-protected Web video, but HTML editor Ian Hickson has dealt it a serious blow by calling it impractical and "unethical."

"I believe this proposal is unethical and that we should not pursue it," Hickson said in a mailing list message this week. "The proposal...does not provide robust content protection, so it would not address this use case even if it wasn't unethical," he added.

The Web video DRM debate--and this one isn't the first--shows the difficulties of reconciling open standards with the constraints of the commercial video industry. Expect more tensions as the the video industry tries to capitalize on the pervasiveness of the Web.

Web technologies such as Hypertext Markup Language have progressed rapidly in recent years, and one headline HTML5 feature lets Web pages include streaming video and audio. So far, though, there's no mechanism for digital rights management (DRM), an encryption mechanism that permits only authorized video and audio in an attempt to deter unauthorized copying.

That means companies offering video often resort to browser plug-ins, such as Adobe Systems' Flash Player, that support DRM and copy protection. Indeed, although Adobe has embraced HTML and related Web standards, it also has declared ... [Read more]