UberMusic is a music player inspired by the Metro UI and Zune Player for Windows Phone 7, and it is the most gorgeous music player you will find in the Android Market. It mimics the Zune player even in the animations. This skinnable music player, made by the same developer of LauncherPro, is gaining fast popularity in the Android Market in less than a week out of beta its already sold almost 10,000 copies of. Lets see why this app is growing so fast.

 

Features

Skins

The first thing that got my attention was the ability to install skins. One of the key features to an Android phone is the possibility to give your own look to your phone, and as I am a musician and totally addicted to music, another great thing to have in my phone is a good music player.

You can give the app the look you want to, and although its only recently been released, there are already some great skins available. The app itself has an already styled skin thats really cool not as cool as the Metro Skin, but still keeping the feeling of the Windows Phone 7 music player.

User Interface

The UI of UberMusic is like a clone of the WP7 music player. It even mimics the animations and the super smooth scrolling it has. I believe the Metro UI of Windows Phone 7 is one of the most beautiful UIs ever designed, and UberMusic takes this same attitude to heart.

If you swipe as the player starts, it will softly change to the next tab, out of (by default):

• Artists
• Albums
• Songs
• Playlists
• Genres
• Folders

Selecting a letter on the Artists tabs shows a interface to let you sort by letter, just as in Zune on Windows Phone 7 again, it mimics even the animation of this interface.

 

 

When you are on an artist’s tab, it will download a picture of the artist in question and used it as the background. Another great feature is that it downloads the biography of the artist and shows it in another tab inside the artist tab.

 

Another great UI feature is the "Now Playing" status in the notification bar, which displays a minimalistic status including the cover art of the album. Likewise, when playing a song, it shows the cover art for the album you are listening to as the background, and if you swipe you’ll be taken to the next song on the playlist.

 

Now playing screen and the notification bar

Scrobbling and Shuffling

As with most music players, UberMusic has the option of scrobbling your listened songs to Last.fm, either through the Last.fm app or through ScrobbleDroid/SLS.

Also, UberMusic uses a true shuffling system that never repeats the songs you already listened till the playlist has played all songs. To activate the shuffle, you just tap the cover art of the playing song and then select the shuffle symbol; you can also select the repeat mode through the same interface.

 

Widgets and Wallpaper

This wonderful music player comes with 6 widgets in different sizes, and these, too, are skinnable. The skin may be just for the widget or it may come together with the player skin you have downloaded itself. Even without any skin, it is already beautiful, with a semi-transparent background and the controller buttons, alongside cover art for the song.

 

4x4 Widget

 

But what really impressed me is the UberMusic live wallpaper. I thought it was just another slide show or something, but its actually a really beautiful display of cover art, all in the same screen, with a gorgeous animation that flips the covers, just like Windows Phone 7 does with its Tiles.

 

Live Wallpaper Animation

Download (Android Appstore)

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After launching an iPad version of their app and updating the Android version to support more devices in the last few days, Skype has now turned its attention to their Mac application, which has just been bumped to version 5.3.

The two major changes in this new version include support for OS X Lion as well as HD video calling.The latter will require you to have either the latest generation MacBook Pro, iMac or the Thunderbolt Display that have FaceTime HD camera built-in or a separate HD webcam.

 

 

Skype has just added video calling support for an additional 17 popular droids with its latest ver. 2.1 for Android. Some of them are the HTC Flyer slate, Samsung Galaxy S II, the Xperia PLAY and more.

 

 

The minimum requirement you have to cover is Android version 2.2 (Froyo) or above and even if your device is not blessed to be in the list of newly supported droids you should be able to enable video chat through the app settings. Keep in mind that this will allow only rear camera video calling and you will need 2.3 Gingerbread and beyond to enjoy true front-facing camera chat support. Apart from video-calling support, the new update brings a number of bug fixes and a performance boost.

 

Supported Devices:

 

• Acer A5


• HTC Desire (2.2)


• HTC Desire HD


• HTC Evo 3D


• HTC Evo 4G


• HTC Flyer


• HTC Incredible S


• HTC Sensation


• HTC Thunderbolt - Verizon (2.2) (US only)


• LG Revolution - Verizon (2.2) (US only)


• Samsung Droid Charge - Verizon (2.2) (US only)


• Samsung Galaxy S


• Samsung Galaxy S II


• Samsung Galaxy Tab


• Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro


• Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY


• Sony Ericsson Xperia ray

 

Download Skype 2.1

 

 

Mobile application market keeps growing with the day. However, while the market is flooded, there is also significant pricing pressure as well as a shift toward free applications which will necessitate new revenue models. Despite all potential hurdles, In-Stat is forecasting that mobile application download revenues will surpass $29 billion in 2015. According to senior analyst Amy Cravens, as the market matures, developers and app stores must "take innovative approaches and compete across multiple platforms to attract users." She continues saying that we have the iPhone to thank for the growth in this market.

Some other findings from the report include:

• Mobile application downloads will approach 48 billion in 2015.
• The average amount paid for a mobile app is under $2.50.
• Smartphones are expected to increase from 23% of total phone shipments in 2010 to over 45% in 2015.
• Almost half of In-Stats survey respondents report downloading applications over Wi-Fi.

 

SPB Software has released a new version of its SPB Shell 3D interface for Android. In addition to the 3D interface with panes and the 3D dynamic widgets, SPB has added lots of other awesome goodies. The most notable new feature is the 3D stereoscopic support.

 

There are also landscape support and experimental tablet mode, lots of improvements both visual and functional and a new bookmark folder.

 

Demo Below!