Shazam updated its Android application with a new feature music previews. As a result, Shazamers are able to listen to a 30-second clip of a song they have tagged, helping them decide if they like it and want to buy it. Whats more, music previews will also work when browsing through tag history, friends tags in Shazam Friends, or tags featured in Shazam Tag Chart and Recommendations. On the downside, this feature is limited to users in select countries, including the US, UK, Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland.

 

In addition, the new version of Shazam for Android also comes with improved tag results page which now comes with larger cover art. Moreover, the location feature is also included, showing users where they were when they Shazam would a track.

 

 

 

 

The Hulu team released the Hulu Plus app for Android, which means you can finally put your Plus subscription to good use on your droid. Its a pretty exclusive club for now only six phones are officially supported.

It does not seem to be a question of processing power, so I do not really know how they picked them them. The supported phones are the Nexus One and S, Motorola Droid X and II, the Atrix and the HTC Inspire 4G. If you do not have one of these models, you can’t use the Hulu Plus app. Weird since the Nexus S is virtually identical to the Samsung Galaxy S. Anyway, Hulu is promising support for more devices later this year.

 

 

A subscription to Hulu Plus costs $7.99 a month but you get the first week for free. For those who do not know what Hulu is, the app lets you watch episodes of a long list of current TV shows as well as shows that have finished their run plus some movies.

 

 

 

ZeptoLab is finally bringing its super-populariOS title Cut the Rope to the Android community. The award-winning game, which has already been cloned (Rope Cut) on Google mobile platform, is at the moment available exclusively from GetJar. The "world largest independent app store" scored the launch rights which are usually go for a week or so after which Cut the Rope will hit the "regular" Android Market, too.

If you have been living under a rock, here is what you should know about the game: Cut the Rope is a physics-based game that features little green monster Om Nom, who needs to be fed with a candy. Your job is to cut an increasingly complicated series of ropes to release candy into his mouth, while capturing a series of stars on the way down. There are 175 tricky levels included, as well as "colorful, high-definition visuals."

 

Ever taken a photo of something breathtaking, but found later that something snuck in your shot? Or maybe you have seen a stunning landscape but there is some random house in the background. Well now you can remove anything that should not be in a picture with TouchRetouch, an app thats very simple to use, with a user-friendly interface. It basically brings Photoshop CS5 context-sensitive fill to your handset.

Available @ Android Market!

TouchRetouch  price: $0.99

Interface

When you run the app you get to choose whether to retouch a photo from your gallery or take a fresh picture from your default camera app.

Once you’ve selected your picture from the gallery you will need to choose at what resolution to edit the picture. Depending on the size of the original image there are different options. In my case, I only have Original and Low.

The application will now load the photo and a number of tools are provided to retouch your photos:

• Lasso
• Brush
• Clone Stamp
• Go!

These are tools made especially for retouching. I will explain how each retouch tool works below.
The are also a few other buttons for miscellaneous actions:

• Load Image
• Undo
• Redo
• Info
• Move
• Eraser
• Save

Retouching tools

Lasso

The Lasso tool works like any lasso tool in any major photo manipulation software. You draw a shape and it fills it out by connecting the first and last two points with a a straight line. This tool is perfect to use when you need to cover bigger objects.

Brush

The Brush tool is pretty self-explanatory. You can adjust its size and brush away!

Clone Stamp

The Clone Stamp tool resembles the clone stamp tool from the application desktop brothers. Its basically a brush that takes the color from the picture itself. You set a source and then using the brush part of the clone stamp you paint over the wanted area. Pretty basic and simple.

Go!

As you might have noticed when you use the Lasso and Brush tools you will get a red area where you painted over. Once you’ve marked all the spots you want to remove from your picture, you press the Go! button and the application retouches your photo. Usually the application does a good job retouching. There are some cases when a second round of retouching is needed, but that happens rarely.

Misc Tools

The name of the miscellaneous tools tells the whole story and I don’t think there is a need to explain each one what does. The only exception is the Eraser tool which erases not the photo, but the red areas that are drawn with the Brush and Lasso tools.

Before and After

Below is an image that I have retouched. I am pleased with the results. It was raining after a very hot day, and the steam that came up from the ground created a pretty foggy looking landscape. The only problem with the shot was the cars, but TouchRetouch did a pretty good job removing them.

Info and Settings

When you tap the Info button you are taken to the Info menu. Here you can find the application’s Settings, Video tutorials, Help Section and Support Section. There are a few settings and they really don’t need much explanation.

The application offers two tutorials (Basic and Advanced). These are very helpful and a very good starting point to learn how to use the app. I found them very useful, as I really had no idea how to use the application at first.

In the Help menu you will find everything about the application. Every button and feature of TouchRetouch is explained in detail and you will even get a history of retouching.

Video Below!

 

Just as promised, today Mozilla released the next version of their widely popular Firefox browser. Firefox 5.0 has been available for download through the company FTP servers for a couple of days now, but now that its officially finalized you can get if straight from the Mozilla website or the Android Market.

 

According to the developers Firefox 5.0 brings over 1,000 improvements and performance enhancements compared to its predecessor. That is no mean feat considering that its development only took three months.

 

The most notable changes in functionality will come to the Android version of Firefox. It will now include the Do Not Track privacy feature, which gives you more control over the way your browsing behavior is tracked and used on the Web. Also, the feature that lets you tell websites that you wish to opt-out of online behavioral tracking, is now easier to find in all Firefox versions.

 

Android users will get faster load times too, especially when using 3G networks for browsing. The mobile add-on gallery has been extended and the support for the popular SwiftKey keyboard has been improved. Next on the major changes list is the support for CSS Animations standard, which should open the door richer Web applications and websites and that comes to all platforms.

 

Finally Mozilla released a new Firefox Add-on SDK for Windows, Mac and Linux to facilitate the development of add-ons for its browser. We all know how important add-ons are for the Firefox ecosystem so this might as well be the greatest of changes even if it does not have any immediate effect.