The Mosaic app lets you preview each page of your photo book before you place your order.

The Mosaic Team sent me an early copy of the app and I was able to go through the process of creating a photo book, and have the finished product sent to me late last week.

How does the Mosaic app work? It lets you gather up pictures from a vacation, party, barbeque, or other life event, and easily make a coffee table book of photos at a reasonable price. Once ordered, the finished product arrives in four days.

The app lets you tap to select 20 images -- no more and no less.

We've seen other apps that do something similar, such as post card making apps and Apple's own Cards app. But to be able to gather up a bunch of pictures from an event on your iPhone, then easily send a hard copy to a friend for cheap, Mosaic has the potential to be a great way to capture memories for just about anyone.

The app is incredibly easy to use. You simply touch a button that says Create a New Mosaic, then choose your Camera Roll, Photo Stream, or any other shared folder of photos. From there you need to select 20 photos -- no more and no less -- preferably from an event so all the photos fit a theme. As you select photos, a window opens up on the bottom th... [Read more]

Mozilla's Social API debuts with Facebook integration in Firefox Beta.

Mozilla's Social API has activated in Firefox Beta today with its first partner, Facebook Messenger. The innovation has the potential to forever alter how browsers interact with social-networking sites, but the project is still in its infancy.

The Social API (turn it on here: Firefox Beta or Firefox Aurora) looks at the problem of how to integrate modern social networking into the browser, Johnathan Nightingale, Mozilla's director of Firefox Engineering, said during a phone conversation with CNET. "People don't use social like they use other parts of the Web. It's not task based; it's something that pervades that you're constantly touching throughout the day. People put it in an app tab, or keep it on their phone, constantly glancing back at it."

To that end, the Social API creates a framework that allows social-networking services to integrate more thoroughly with the browser. It requires the browser to support the API, which currently is limited to Firefox, but it also requires the social-... [Read more]

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Isn't it annoying when you load a Web page and audio starts playing without warning? Usually it's a background music track or an advertisement video, but it always seems to happen at the worst time: when your volume is the loudest. Maybe you just finished watching a movie on Netflix with a lot of whispering and suddenly your ears are being assaulted by loud noises.

Instead of policing your volume levels before each Web browsing session, why not just disable those plug-ins from loading content unless you say it's OK? Here's how to disable plug-ins from playing content automatically in Google Chrome:

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET )

Step 1: Open the general menu in the top right-h... [Read more]

Harry and the Haunted House resurrects the classic Living Books title that originated on PCs and Macs.

Halloween is just over a week away, making this the perfect time to sit down with the kids and read them a spooky story, but not too spooky, of course.

Oh, you better believe there are apps for that. I've rounded up five Halloween-friendly e-books for young readers, all of them interactive in some way, and all of them able to pinch-hit as narrator when you're busy. Except where noted, they'll run on any iOS device; some are available for Android as well.

Harry and the Haunted House (iOS) Though not expressly a Halloween story, this terrific app resurrects another of the classic Living Books series, which was always a favorite in the Broida household. Although Harry and the Haunted House has only 12 pages, each one is packed with interactive items: tap just about anything and it comes to life.

The Berenstain Bears Go on a Ghost Walk (Android|... [Read more]