Playing a song in Amazon Cloud Player is not much different from playing it in iTunes.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Amazon Cloud Player (Free) for iOS gives you an option from getting all your music from the iTunes App Store, and it's simple interface is easy to pick up and use immediately.

Whether you have music already from Amazon or not, you can quickly login with your Amazon account and listen to tracks already on your iPhone. If you have downloaded music through Amazon, with the app you'll be able to listen to both Amazon- and iTunes-bought music.

Once you have music uploaded to Amazon's Cloud drive, the interface is dead simple. Two tabs let you switch between Amazon or music on your device. On the bottom of the screen, you get standard playback controls. When viewing your music libraries, you have buttons across the top so you can sort by playlists, artists, albums, songs, or genres. You also can create new playlists from within the app directly. When a song is playing, the app switches to album cover view and adds buttons to the playback controls so you can shuffle or loop songs. There's nothing new here, but the controls make it easy to get to your music wherever it is.

Quickly search for songs using the various sorting menus across the top.

... [Read more]

(Credit: Screenshot by Joe Aimonetti/CNET)

Now at version 1.5, My Xbox Live enables iPhone users who have XBox 360s to control their console using their iPad or iPhone in a whole new way.

Previously the My Xbox Live app only allowed users to track and compare user profiles and achievements, connect with Xbox Live friends, and manipulate your 3D avatar.

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Now, Microsoft has included the capability to access a variety of entertainment content located on your XBox 360 using the My Xbox Live app as a remote. The app allows users to play, pause, fast-forward, a... [Read more]

iWitness, available for iOS and coming soon to Android, is free to download but requires a subscription.

(Credit: iWitness)

As the saying goes, there's an app for that, and now there's one that claims it can deter crime.

The app, iWitness, is free to download for iPhone users (it's coming to Android soon), but requires a subscription to use. Basically, it works like this:

When you're about to enter a "potentially threatening environment" you launch the app and "arm" it. A blinking light emanates from the phone, alerting you -- and hopefully anybody up to no good -- that the phone is armed. If you feel threatened, you then touch your screen and your phone starts capturing audio and video and sends it to a secure server that law enforcement can access. Your GPS coordinates are also recorded and embedded in the video.

If the situation escalates, you can touch the screen again and 911 is automatically called, a text is sent to as many as six preselected contacts, and your phone puts out a "loud" alarm (by loud the developer means as loud as your little iPhone speakers can get).

On the surface, the app sounds like it might have some appeal. But as I said, one of the catches is t... [Read more]

(Credit: Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)

Windows RT could become the platform that helps Microsoft gain tablet market share. But before that can happen, vendors are going to have to pay a hefty sum just to get their hands on it, according to a new report.

Tech site VR-Zone reported yesterday that it recently spoke with several tablet vendors at last week's Computex trade show in Taiwan. And in those discussions, it found that Microsoft is charging between $80 and $95 for Windows RT, the company's ARM-ready operating system. The majority of those vendors said that they were quoted $85.

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• ... [Read more]

The paid version of AVG Family Safety on iOS provides several options for customizing on the fly.

(Credit: AVG)

AVG Family Safety has extended kid-proofing mobile protection to the handful of Windows Phones on the market today, as well as revamping its app for iPhones and iPads.

AVG, which has more than 110 million active users, is offering the app in free and paid flavors. When installing, simply elect not to supply Family Safety account info and the app will be available in its restricted but free mode.

For $19.99 per year, you get a Web browser alternative, automatic link scanning courtesy AVG's LinkScanner tech, and access to a reasonable set of parental control tools.

The free version provides the alternative browser, which automatically blocks pornographic Web sites via a blacklist, and a data feed from LinkScanner. AVG's proprietary link scanning tech keeps an eye out for social engineering tricks like phishing, along with blocking malicious, non-pornographic sites.

"[AVG Family Safety] serves two purposes," said Tony Anscombe, AVG's evangelist. "It's for protecting the child's phone, but it's also for use on baby-sitter phones," or phones that are most often used by a parent, but are regularly loaned to children to keep them entertained, he said.

Here's what AVG Family Safe... [Read more]