If you are looking for a free word processor for your mobile device, you might want to try Quip. The app is currently only available in iOS, but you can sign up for a preview version of the Android app.

The feature packed app includes a suite of tools for collaborative editing, including a way to chat with your co-writers while writing together in virtual space. Unlike many mobile writing programs, Quip also tracks your changes in a document. Check it out:

Diffs are simple visual representations of edits to a document. Diffs get added to the thread every time an edit is made, showing what’s changed, who made the change, and when they made it. When someone else edits a document, diffs make it easy to stay up-to-date without re-reading the whole document.

Amazon Web Services announced a new tool today that gives app developers the ability to add push notifications to apps in the Amazon App Store, iTunes and Google Play.

Amazon is calling it the “Amazon Simple Notification Service or Amazon SNS,” but essentially it is like other app push messaging, as it allows developers to send a notification to users in order to get them to come back to an app. Developers can use the functionality for free, sending up to a million push messages a month for free. Beyond that Amazon will charge developers $.50 for every million messages published, and $.50 for every million messages delivered. In other words, $1.00 total per million messages after the first million.

“Many customers tell us they build and maintain their own mobile push services, even though they find this approach expensive, complex and error-prone,” stated Raju Gulabani, Vice President of Database Services, AWS. “Amazon SNS with Mobile Push takes these concerns off the table with one simple cross-platform API, a flat low price and a free tier that means many customers won’t pay anything until their applications achieve scale.”

Laws against phone unlocking have not stopped the activity. In fact, since the practice was outlawed in the United States back in January, it has risen by 71.09 percent, according to metrics from Mobile Unlocked, a UK-based website that helps consumers jailbreak their phones.

The company analyzed the activity in December 2012, before the law went into effect, and compared the findings with the number of times phones were jailbroken in June 2013, a few months after the law went into effect.

Here is more from Mobile Unlocked: “As a proportion of visits to our site, US traffic numbers have fallen. Traffic from the US accounted for 8.45% of visits to our site in December 2012, and just 7.14% in July 2013. This shows that some people are now shying away from unlocking their phones, whereas before they were willing to find out more.” (Via VentureBeat).

Leave your iPhone at home because you won’t need it for this drone – it’s controlled by your brain. Think telepathy. Just by thinking of forming a fist with your right hand will move the quadrocopter to the right. Mind over matter right? Since the technology is non-invasive and does not require chips or any other sort of physical implants,  test subjects were able to strap on a brain-sensor “hat” that detects the brain’s neurons, which then propels the helicopter. Watch the amazing video demonstration below.
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The popular note-taking app Evernote has forged a partnership with the Latin American telecommunications company Telefonica in a move that will expand its presence in South America.

At launch the partnership makes the Evernote Premium service available to Telefonica’s Vivo subscribers in Brazil for a year. Here is more from the Evernote blog:

Our plan is to expand this relationship to reach the hundreds of millions of Telefonica mobile customers throughout Latin America and Europe. Vivo customers can get Evernote Premium immediately by downloading Evernote for iOS or Android from www.vivo.com.br/evernote. Once they sign into Evernote, their account will be upgraded with features including a higher monthly upload limit (1GB), the ability to access notes and notebooks offline, enhanced security features, more sharing options, and faster customer support. This offer is available for a limited time.

This is Evernote’s first partnership in Latin America. The company already has partnerships with Deutsche Telekom in Germany, NTT Docomo in Japan, and Taiwan Mobile, among others.

Visual arts book publisher Phaidon is entering the digital book market with the launch of four modern artist monographs from the Phaidon Focus series.

The titles, which include: Andy Warhol by Joseph Ketner; Francis Bacon by Martin Hammer; Brice Marden by Eileen Costello; and Anselm Kiefer by Matthew Biro, will be available exclusively through iTunes.com/Phaidon for $9.99. Titles about Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, and Cindy Sherman are slated for release in 2014.

“Phaidon has been publishing beautiful books on art and culture for a sophisticated global audience since 1923 and so it is with no little excitement that we are launching our first titles on iBooks,” stated David Davies, CEO of Phaidon. “Apple has created the first digital platform able to do justice to our award-winning content and design work and we’re overjoyed to bring our first digital editions to market. This new publishing program begins with four titles from the Phaidon Focus series of affordable and definitive monographs on leading modern artists, including Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Anselm Kiefer, and will develop into a significant digital library of beautiful art titles.”

The latest smartphone innovation is a flexible e-ink displace that is writable and bendable. In fact, physically bending the paper-thin phone allows you to control the device. The phone is capable of remembering and performing functions with the slightest warping of the flexible computer. Just a little flex and you can make a phone call.

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TradeMob created an infographic called, “How Hard is it to Break Into The App Store?,” which explores the hurdles involved with getting an app into Apple’s App Store.

According to the graphic, simple table-based apps can cost $1,000-5,000 to produce, and well-designed games can cost as much as $250,000. The app also explores the competitive landscape that app developers face. According to the infographic, 67% of developers aren’t breaking even.

We’ve embedded the entire infographic after the jump for you to explore further. Read more

North Korea is reportedly working on a smartphone for citizens, despite the fact that citizens of the country have limited access to the Internet.

The new Android-based device is called the Arirang. According to reports, it features a touch screen and a camera. This past weekend, Kim Jong Un visited the Pyongyang factory where the phones are reportedly being made, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. While Un reportedly praised the factory for making the devices in North Korea, it is likely that the devices were only assembled in North Korea from Chinese parts.

Here is more from the North Korea Tech blog: “Despite KCNA’s reporting that the handsets are made at the factory, they are probably made to order by a Chinese manufacturer and shipped to the May 11 Factory where they are inspected before going on sale.” (Via CNN).

A picture is worth a thousand words and if you like to take notes for stories by snapping pics, then you should check out VoxPixl. The new iPhone app lets you record audio tracks to go along with your iPhone photos, so it is a great way to take down your ideas as you are recording stills.

The app uses a ”Siri-like” technology from Nuance Communications to process the audio clips. Each photo can hold up to 30 seconds in audio. Once you create a voice caption, you can email or text it as well as share it across social networks.

The app also has a pretty cool feature that lets you search these files by keyword or location, which is great for when you get back to your desk to write that story after making lots of recordings on-the-go.