eBay Deals created an infographic called, “The Great Tablet Debate,” which explores consumer preference in tablets.

According to the graphic, Android tablets have the most market share, but the iPad is still the most popular device. Check it out: “Google’s Android system accounted for 56.5% of the tablet market in the first quarter of 2013, whereas Apple’s iOS achieved 39.6%. iPads still dominated though: Apple sold 19.5 million units in Q1 2013, while Samsung sat in second place, having sold 8.8 million of its Android based tablets.”

We’ve embedded the entire graphic after the jump. Read more

Most smartphone owners have dropped their phone once or twice, but a new Android app game from Norwegian developer Carrot Pop may lead to an increase in phone accidents. The app is called Send Me to Heaven (S.M.T.H.). It encourages players to throw their  phone as high as they can and then catch it in order to score points. Users can save their scores to the Carrot Pop server and compare them against the scores of other players.

Using the phone’s accelerometer, the app measures the height that the phone reaches as it goes up in the air. The higher its thrown, the higher the points. Hopefully players will actually catch their phones and they won’t end up smashed on the street beneath players. The company’s disclaimer  says that they aren’t liable for any damage to phones hurt in game play.

It may be an app worth downloading, the week before you upgrade to a new phone.

Ever wondered what Wikipedia looks like as it is being edited? Listen to Wikipedia has created an animation that is updated in real time as Wikipedia is edited. Every time a subject on the site is edited, a bubble with the name of the subject in a different colored ball and then fades out as new topics populate the screen. When a new user joins, their name flashes at the top of the screen. Think “Braniff Airlines” next to “Breaking Bad,” “Gholam-Hossein Elham,” next to “squat (exercise).”  All of this movement is happening to the soundtrack of soothing electronic music. It’s pretty cool to look at Wikipedia in this way.

Here is more about the project:

Listen to Wikipedia’s recent changes feed. The sounds indicate addition to (bells) or subtraction from (strings) a Wikipedia articles, and the pitch changes according to the size of the edit. Green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots. You may see announcements for new users as they join the site — you can welcome him or her by adding a note on their talk page.

(Via Gawker).

Do you have a hard time keeping up your journal? Narrato wants to help make it easy for you to record your ideas and memories through an iPhone app that is as easy to update as Facebook.

Using the app you can create journal entries that are short and sweet or long and thought out. You can write text or select images from your camera roll to share. You can import select tweets and photos and check-ins from Twitter, Instagram, and Foursquare. You can even import weather and location details to help set the mood or remember the location.  The journal content appears in a timeline, not unlike a social media feed, but it’s private.

Perhaps you need a journal for a novel that you are working on, and another to take notes for a feature story that you are writing. A cool feature in the app is that you can create multiple journals. It also works offline, which is great for a travel writer who is out of range. Read more

Jeff Bezos‘ purchase of The Washington Post shocked the publishing industry this week and one of the big questions that people are asking is whether or not the paper will survive in the print medium under the management of such a digitally-focused owner.

Bezos expressed his ideas of the future of reading in the new documentary film Out of Print. ”If you look at technology over the last 20 years, most of our connected devices, whether it be, you know, a smartphone, or a laptop, these are very good for reading news articles, email messages, blog posts,” he said in the film. “We humans do more than what is convenient and easy for us and so I think there has been a shift over the past 20 or so years away from long-form reading, from book-length reading, and toward short-form reading.”

The film, directed by Vivienne Roumani and executive produced by Aryeh Bourkoff, also includes interviews with publishing industry experts including best-selling novelist Scott Turow and Harvard Librarian Robert Darnton.

Do you think print will survive under Bezos’ direction?

Slicebooks, a digital publishing platform that lets publishers cut up and repackage eBook content through a widget, has raised a round of seed funding from ICG Ventures Inc., an Ingram Content Group company.

The company will use the funding to help support the company’s technology and the launch of an upcoming Slicebooks Store, a digital retail environment intended to help publishers repurpose existing content, be it books, magazines or journals, and repackage and sell them digitally. The partnership also makes Slicebooks available to any publisher that has integrated with Ingram Content Group’s CoreSource digital asset management platform. Publishers will not have the option to have their files delivered to Slicebooks for slicing.

“The Slicebooks ecosystem is all about helping publishers repurpose content to improve discoverability while also giving consumers greater choice and flexibility,” stated Jill Tomich, CEO of Slicebooks. “Our mission is to make all content available whole, sliced and remixable, and how, when and where consumers want it. Everything we build has that goal in mind.”

Locking yourself out of your home or your car will no longer require a call to a locksmith, thanks to a new iPhone app called KeyMe. KeyMe lets you store digital copies of your keys in the cloud that you can access in the event that you are locked out.

So how does it work? First you have to download the app and use it to take photos of your keys, creating a digital version of your physical keychain. Then if you get locked out, you can take your phone to a KeyMe kiosk or bring the digital files to a hardware store that will make keys based on these digital files (better find out who does this in your area before you run the risk of getting locked out).

You can also mail order copies of your keys. This feature would come in handy if you have guests coming to stay in your home and you won’t be there to let them in. You can also share the digital files with friends and they can go and get copies made on their own. (Via TechCrunch).

Disney has released a new iPad app that takes readers through the history of Disney animation. Disney Animated tells the story of Walt Disney Animation Studios through the decades highlighting the technologies that helped create the classics like Cinderella and Winnie the Pooh.

The app features a collection of interactive illustrations and virtual animation workshops based on actual Disney technologies. Readers can see how Disney animated films are brought to life from idea through to final assembly. Readers can peel back the layers of these animated scenes to reveal the work-in-progress animation steps and visual effects layers behind their creation. Readers can try their own hand at animation by animating Vanellope from Wreck-It Ralph using a 3D animation package based on real Disney software.

The app also features a timeline of all 53 Disney animated feature films along with including video clips. The app features more than 750 interactive illustrations, more than 400 short animation clips and more than 350 photos from Disney’s Archives. Disney created the $13.99 app in conjunction with app developer Touch Press.

Toca Band is today’s Recommended Children’s App of the Week.

The app encourages kids to experiment with found music. Kids can choose from 16 different characters, each that has their own unique musical sound, and arrange 48 different sound loops on stage. The $2.99 iOS app’s musical tracks includes a range of music from rock guitar to opera.

Here is more from the app’s description: Put your band members on stage to get the music started – then move them around and see what happens! Try out new band combinations, explore different sounds – and while you’re at it, why not give the lovable rapper, Stikk Figga something he always dreamed of: a solo performance!
Read more

YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen have created a new video editing app that lets you shoot, edit and publish videos that is similar to Instagram or Vine.

Unlike their competitors though, Avos Systems’s new app MixBit has better editing tools. Rather than just clipping videos, users can edit together strings of clips that can be anywhere from a second to an hour long. Videos are made up of clips that can be as long as 16 seconds each and a MixBit video can be made up of as many as 256 video clips.

MixBit lets you drag and drop clips into a mini timeline, where you can rearrange them. Not only can you make your own content, you can use the app to remix other users’ videos. Once you’ve created a video, you can post it and share it to the MixBit community. The app is currently available for the iPhone and as a web app. An Android version is expected late next week.