Trending December 2023 # Turn Your Smartphone Into A Universal Remote Control # Suggested January 2024 # Top 17 Popular

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Turn Your Smartphone Into A Universal Remote Control

TV remote apps may not necessarily be compatible with all television units, however, if you choose the best remote control app for your devices, you’ll surely be able to operate your TV, smart home devices, set-top boxes, ACs and more. Mi Remote App outshined dramatically with changing technology. It’s not necessary that your TV unit should be a Smart TV, even ordinary LCD, LED TVs can also be controlled along with the set-top box. Let’s countdown the best Apps here.

SURE – Smart Home and TV Universal Remote

SURE not only works best for Smart TVs but also works solely for your AC, Smart Light, Smart Fan, Smart Doors, Smart Garage, Media Streaming, Home Automation, and Projectors, etc. SURE Universal is best compatible with Smartphones armed with an Infrared (IR) blaster.

Technical Specifications

Updated – May 17, 2023

Size – 56MB

Installs – 10,000,000+

Current Version – 4.21.121.20230516

Requires Android – 5.0 and up

Get It Now

Universal TV Remote Control

Universal TV Remote Control is one of the finest developed App to connect all devices connected to the same Wi-Fi network. The only setting you need to configure is to connect the mobile device and Smart TV on the same Wi-Fi Network and you are all set to go. Once the SmartPhone is connected to the same Wi-Fi network, you would be able to take control of all the devices connected to the same network, irrespective it is a Smart TV or a Smart AC, Your Laptop, Computer or any media streaming device.

Technical Specifications

Updated – August 22, 2023

Size – 11MB

Installs – 50,000,000+

Current Version – 1.0.71

Requires Android – 4.2 and up

 Get It Now

Google Home

Google has given us a lot of intelligence and Google Home is one of them. Google home is a smart remote control app to manage and control your Google Home and Chromecast devices and hundreds of home products like TVs, Smart TVs, Lights, Media, Cameras, Thermostats, ACs, and other devices connected to your network.

Control your home with one view of your home with one app & Hundreds of possibilities.

Technical Specifications

Updated – August 28, 2023

Size – 25MB

Installs – 100,000,000+

Current Version – 2.13.50.15

Requires Android – 4.4 and up

Get It Now

AnyMote Universal Remote + Wi-Fi Smart Home Control

AnyMote Universal Remote App is again one of the most popular IR enabled remote control app to control your TVs and Smart Home Electronics. This smart remote control app works best with Samsung, AVR, Panasonic, Sharp, Xfinity TVs, ACs, Thermostats, Smart Lights, Smart gadgets, Xbox and other multimedia devices. As per the developers, there are around 900,000 devices listed in this app which can be controlled using this App.

The console of AnyMote remote is user-friendly enough to give you customizable interface by re-arranging buttons, positions, text, changing colors, icons & much more. You can also create macros to execute multiple commands with a single touch, for example, turn off the TV, Lights, Network and AC at the same time with one tap. It is smart enough to automate tasks without commands, like Mute TV when on a Call. You can also use voice commands to execute commands even while using other apps.

If your smartphone doesn’t have an IR control, you can make use of Wi-Fi network to connect and execute commands on your multimedia devices connected to the same network.

Technical Specifications

Updated – 21 April 2023

Size – 14MB

Installs – 10,000,000+

Current Version – 4.6.9

Requires Android – 4.0.3 and up

Yatse: Kodi remote control and cast

Yatse Kodi remote control app allows you to fully manage all of your devices. The interface is not only simple, fast, and beautiful but also offers everything you need to enhance your Kodi experience. There are several features that make Yatse the best original Kodi remote control app for your Android smartphone.

Technical Specifications

Updated – August 9, 2023

Size – Varies with device

Installs – 1,000,000+

Current Version – Varies with device

Requires Android – Varies with device

Get It Now

Also Read: Best YouTube Video Downloader App For Android 2023

Mi Remote Controller – For TV, STB, AC And More

Mi Remote App is another remote control app offering control on your electric appliances using your smartphone. Mi Remote offers support on multiple gadgets like Smart TV, AC, set-top box, projector, DVD player, A/V receiver, camera, etc. Mi Remote App supports a wide range of electronic brands like LG, Samsung, Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, Haier, Micromax, Videocon, etc.

Mi Remote App is mostly supported on following smartphones: Samsung S4/S5/S6/S6 Edge/Note 3/Note 4, Mi 4/Mi 4c/Mi 5/Mi 5S Plus/Mi 5C/Mi 5X/Mi 6, HTC One Series, Redmi Note 2/Redmi Note 3/Redmi Note4/Redmi Note4X/Redmi Note5A, Redmi 4/Redmi 4A/Redmi 4X, Huawei Honor 3/6/6 plus

If your device is not listed here, don’t lose your heart, you can still download Mi Remote App and use it over the same Wi-Fi connection to access your network devices.

Technical Specifications

Updated – July 17, 2023

Size – 26MB

Installs – 10,000,000+

Current Version – 5.8.4.5G

Requires Android – 4.3 and up

Get It Now

Best iOS Remote Control App – Universal Remote TV Smart

When it comes to iOS, there are possibilities that you get fewer options for a smart remote control app however whatever you will find, should be the best and compatible with almost all the devices and electronics. Universal Remote App is one such remote control app that we have found the most efficient app to control any of your Smart Devices using your iPhone.

Universal Remote App works best with Samsung, Sony, LG, Panasonic, Philips, Roku sticks, TCL Roku, Telefunken, Hitachi, Grundig, Continental Edison TV, and multiple other devices. As iPhones don’t support IR, your iPhone must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your Smart TV. This App automatically detects your TV depending on the model of your TV. Your TV will give you a prompt message that needs to be accepted to configure the smart remote control app.

Technical Specifications

Updated – July – 2023

Size – 38.5MB

Installs – 1,000,000+

Current Version – 2.5

Requires iOS – 10.3 or Later

Get It Now

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Turn Your Business Into An Innovation Hub

The Process of Business Innovation How to use a strategic approach to creative thinking

It’s the secret everybody wants to know: how do you come up with that killer idea? When will that flash of inspiration come that turns you into the next Steve Jobs, the next Mark Zuckerberg? Every business, every entrepreneur, is desperately waiting for a shout of “Eureka!” in the tub—and record profits.

The truth is, innovation is more than a moment of genius; it’s a process through which that idea becomes a value-creating product. Take tax software company Intuit. In 2011, Intuit announced the national rollout of a breakthrough app that allowed users to file their taxes by smartphone. It wasn’t the brainchild of any single employee, but a team of experts from across the company. Intuit had started out looking for a way to help customers scan tax documents, but when its software and tax experts watched customers using their phones, they realized they didn’t have to stop at a glorified camera app. With prototyping, constant iteration, and field testing, they created the SnapTax app in just six weeks. It allowed users to file simple tax returns in about 15 minutes; within two weeks of its launch, SnapTax had knocked Angry Birds off the top of the iTunes app chart, according to Intuit’s CEO.

“There’s nothing routine about the innovation journey,” says Siobhan O’Mahony, a Boston University Questrom School of Business associate professor of strategy and innovation and a dean’s research fellow. “Most of the time, businesses are focused on replicating processes they’ve worked out that deliver great value in terms of products and services. We can teach people to operate more efficiently, we can teach them to operate more effectively, and we can give pretty precise prescriptions about how to improve along metrics that are already known and identified. But when we innovate, we break away from routine.”

She studies how companies and groups organize for innovation—that is, how they create environments that allow ingenuity to thrive while supporting institutional goals. Her research offers insights to both new and established firms about where innovative ideas come from and how we can transform those ideas into sources of value.

O’Mahony explores how organizations bridge the gap between the fluid, often unpredictable art of creativity and the refining and evaluating that are necessary to bring an amorphous idea to reality. “When we look at innovation, we see a replicable process, but it doesn’t look like you’d expect it to,” she says of her work. “It’s a dance between generating and cultivating—between letting a thousand flowers bloom and reining it back in.”

Identifying the replicable aspects of successful innovation drives O’Mahony’s research. Her findings have given rise to a number of best practices applicable across fields for all stages of the innovation process, from idea to product to marketplace.

Where do good ideas come from?

At the heart of innovation, of course, is an idea. But the innovation process actually begins before the idea, with two questions: why are we seeking to innovate in the first place? What is the need our organization seeks to meet?

“For the individual who wants to be more innovative, the first step is getting the problem right,” O’Mahony says. “The better you understand your problem, the better your solution is going to be.” This is one reason the best ideas tend to come from the people who are closest to the consumer or to the products: a comprehensive understanding of customers’ habits or the strengths and weaknesses of a product can lead us to identify a previously unmet need—the vital innovation practice known as “need-finding.” This is the breakthrough that renders superfluous the product or technology that our innovation replaces. A commercial airline pilot answered an unmet need among his colleagues by putting two wheels and a collapsible handle on a suitcase, and in so doing upended the luggage market. “Identifying the unmet need is the holy grail for innovation. Once that innovation is created, everybody’s suitcase under their bed and in their closet has no value,” O’Mahony says.

Need-finding requires “deep observation of human behavior,” O’Mahony says. Deep observation happens when you see your flight crew exhausted from lugging their bags from gate to gate. It happens when you’re at a party and the host is struggling to answer late guests’ texts by typing on a phone docked to her speakers—you realize that she needs the phone to be in her pocket, and you create the Bluetooth speaker. “Those deep insights of unmet need really come from taking stock of the behaviors and experiences around you and not trying to change them, but trying to design to them,” O’Mahony says.

Once a need is identified, the next step is to find a solution. This is the stage of a thousand ideas blooming. The more ideas—more numerous, more radical, more diverse—the better. O’Mahony uses the metaphor of a funnel. At the top of the funnel are the raw materials of innovation: the crazy notion, the surprising insight, the Hey, what if we tried this? “Most ideas will fail, and that’s okay,” she says. “That’s how the innovation process works. You take the ideas from the top of the funnel and iterate and refine them so that what comes out at the bottom is an innovation.”

Most great innovations aren’t completely fresh themselves, but originate as new combinations of things that already exist—Airbnb and Uber, for example, innovated by putting the renting of hotel rooms and hired cars into a new context. Encouraging lots of ideas from a broad range of people increases the chances of landing on one of these new combinations. According to an innovation theory known as the variance hypothesis, exposure to a wider range of ideas from different fields outside our usual frame of reference increases the capacity to innovate, and it applies at all levels of an organization. Teams that bring together people with diverse areas of expertise, experience, and perspective produce more, and more innovative ideas. The same goes for firms that look outside institutional walls—creating cross-industry partnerships or crowdsourcing.

But O’Mahony has found that the innovative value of our network is only as great as the quality of our contacts. In “One foot in, one foot out: How does individuals’ external search breadth affect innovation outcomes?” published in 2014 in the Strategic Management Journal, O’Mahony and her collaborators looked at innovation among the top engineers and scientists at IBM, one of the world’s largest holders of intellectual property. As the variance hypothesis predicts, the most successful innovators had broad, diverse networks that ranged across institutional and vocational boundaries—customers, suppliers, members of government, academics, competitors, and members of trade associations.

But O’Mahony also found that the innovators with the most impact were those who allocated more time to developing the individual contacts within their networks. The researchers with “thick” ties—those more intimate connections cultivated through meetings, site visits, and other in-person interactions—produced not only more ideas but more novel and useful innovations than those whose networks consisted of less robust ties, however diverse those networks may have been.

“After you’ve got the problem right, the second step for those who want to be more innovative is to get out of your chair and engage with the world,” O’Mahony says. “Talk to as many people as you can. And not just by email; I really believe context matters. Engage in real dialogue—in person, on site.”

Turning an idea into reality

Most innovations need time and space to evolve, and developing an initial idea into a successful product is a social process—team members work together, each raising questions and contributing solutions along the way. That’s what happened at Intuit with the SnapTax app. As MIT Technology Review put it in a 2011 article on the company’s product design process, “Regular employees were trained as ‘innovation catalysts’ who worked with teams on better strategies for assessing what customers wanted and coming up with ideas for how to provide it.”

Teams working on turning an idea into a product face a challenge unique to this process: how do we share a concept of a thing that doesn’t yet exist? “One of the things that matters to innovation is making sure that everyone who’s working on the product is touching the same elephant,” O’Mahony says. In a 2014 article for the journal Organization Science, “Managing the Repertoire: Stories, Metaphors, Prototypes, and Concept Coherence in Product Innovation,” O’Mahony and Victor P. Seidel of Babson College studied six product development teams as they created new tech devices, medical technologies, and automotive products. As each product was designed, the original concept needed to be continually reconsidered, refined, and redefined. Every day brought new decisions to be made, new questions to be answered. O’Mahony and Seidel looked at how team members made these decisions.

They found that successful innovating teams used three kinds of verbal and visual representations to communicate and maintain a consistent, coherent vision of their product. The teams used prototypes to communicate the product’s physical appearance. They also used stories that captured the essence of the problem to be solved by the product. For example, an anecdote about a company founder unable to carry all of the books and paperwork he needed on a transcontinental flight was the focal narrative for a team creating an e-book reader in a pre-Kindle era. The story encapsulated a central need the e-reader would fill and provided a reference point for designers: it had to be portable and able to handle a variety of content. Questions of device size, battery life, memory capacity, and user interface could be answered in the context of a user on a long flight.

Successful innovation teams also used metaphors or slogans to communicate key qualities of a product. For the e-reader team, the phrase “It’s not a computer, it’s a book!” became a touchstone to keep team members on the same digital page as they faced the daily decisions involved in creating their new product. Would content be displayed in a long block of text, via scrolling, or would it be formatted as individual “pages”? Designers chose the latter, to keep in line with the book metaphor. Would the device include a calculator? No, because books don’t have calculators.

The prototype, the story, and the metaphor function together as a “repertoire of representations,” says O’Mahony, to create a specific, shared vision of what the product will be.

But the process of bringing an innovation from idea to reality is a complicated one. Every step of the developmental process is affected by many factors, such as limitations around cost, feasibility, technical capabilities, and market demand.

O’Mahony and her colleagues identified a set of best practices to ensure that the collective vision evolves in response to these inevitable limitations. First, be clear about constraints. The idea-generating phase is the “more is better” part of the innovation process; now it’s time to rein things in. When everyone working on a team has their own idea for the grand possibilities of a product, consistency and coherence suffer. A metaphor like “It’s not a computer, it’s a book!” defines the scope of the product and provides a context for making design decisions.

Second, get rid of models that don’t work. If a slogan no longer captures the essence of the product, discard it. That handsome initial prototype showcasing an early, idealized version of the product? If it’s no longer an accurate representation of the product, replace it with a more realistic model.

Finally, as new prototypes, stories, or metaphors are created to replace outdated ones, give team members opportunities to ask questions and voice their opinions. Make sure disparities among individuals’ ideas about the product are addressed and resolved so that everybody is working from the same concepts, even as the product evolves.

Measuring success

Leadership needs to think critically not only about the sourcing and diversity of ideas being generated, but about how we select which ideas to move ahead and which to jettison. The key: don’t be too hasty. If we act too quickly to cut our losses, we risk missing out on promising innovations. We may not immediately see the market for a new idea; we may misjudge its potential value; we may see only the obstacles to an idea’s success and not the path that allows it to thrive. “I see so many companies that prematurely kill an idea, only to find a competitor launches that product within six months or a year,” O’Mahony says. “There is a gestation process to innovation. You have to let the little seedlings grow. Too many companies dump them out of the pot before they’re ready.”

To nourish the seeds of innovation, she says, we need to create “slack”—to free up resources, to make space for new ideas to gestate. That may mean giving time to employees to work on their own ventures, as 3M has done since its 15 percent program, which allows researchers to spend up to 15 percent of their paid time on projects of their choosing, was launched in 1948. It may mean allocating funding and resources, as JPMorgan Chase & Co. has done in establishing an in-house incubator for financial startups, offering entrepreneurs access to its knowledge and systems to support the innovation of technology solutions to industry problems. It may mean giving an idea to another team, doing deep field research, looking for other data, or simply leaving an idea on a back burner to simmer until a path forward becomes clearer. “You’ve got to create your sandbox,” O’Mahony says. “You need to create room to experiment, to allow new ideas to incubate and evolve and iterate and process. Whether it’s money or space or time, you need to create the slack resources—in the name of the future.”

Explore Related Topics:

Remote Buddy Review: Control Your Mac From Apple Tv Via Siri Remote

Don’t you wish there was a hassle-free way to bring your Mac apps, documents, media, games and more to the big screen—and control them? Enter Remote Buddy, a sweet little app by Roth, Germany based developer Felix Schwarz.

Building on the latest GPU and CPU technologies, Remote Buddy uses a proprietary engine to deliver up to 60 frames per second with a latency of around 0.1 seconds so you really get a smooth, high-speed screen sharing experience.

Having taken Remote Buddy for a quick spin, I’m happy to report that it works incredibly well and really comes in handy when you want to do simple tasks on your desktop-bound Mac without actually sitting in front of your computer.

Getting started with Remote Buddy

To begin, fire up Remote Buddy Display on your Apple TV, select Preferences in the Remote Buddy menu, choose a password to protect your connection on the Mobile Access tab and tick the box next to Enable Mobile Access.

By the way, you cannot use the app without a password. Your Mac should now appear in the Remote Buddy Display interface running on your Apple TV, as shown below.

Simply select your computer, enter your previously created password and just like that, its display gets shown on your TV as if you were using AirPlay Mirroring.

The Mac helper app serves as a conduit that sends everything displayed on your Mac’s screen as a compressed, live video feed to the Apple TV app. Here is my MacBook Air’s external 27-inch 2560-by-1440 resolution Thunderbolt Display, as shown wirelessly on my telly through my Apple TV.

Remote Buddy even supports multiple displays and various zooming modes.

You might ask yourself, “How’s this different from OS X’s built-in AirPlay Mirroring?”

Glad you asked.

Trackpad, mouse and keyboard

These include: Remote, Trackpad, Keyboard, Help (instructions for using touchpad gestures on the Siri Remote), Behaviors, Actions, Power (sleep and shutdown options) and Logout (disconnects you from the Mac helper app).

When some text needs inputting, simply select the Keyboard option to bring up a full-size on-screen QWERTY keyboard with modifier and cursor keys. Using my Siri Remote, I can easily enter, say, a query into iTunes’ search field.

Using the Siri Remote as a trackpad lets you simulate the right mouse button with the Play/Pause button, drag-and-drop by pressing and holding the Siri Remote’s button for two seconds, enter Scroll mode by pressing and holding Play/Pause and more.

I am particularly fond of the Mouse Spot mode, which you enter by touching the Siri Remote’s Touch surface for two seconds, as shown above. This will produce a neat spotlight-effect, which can be useful for presenters as it helps them direct audience attention exactly where they want it.

Actions

For frequently used features, Remote Buddy provides quick shortcuts for more than a hundred Mac apps that can save you a ton of time. Just select Behaviors on your Apple TV and up pops a menu with per-app shortcuts.

In iTunes, the available shortcuts include adjusting volume, choosing ratings, play/pause/stop controls and more. In Photos, you get a set of useful slideshow controls.

In Safari, actions let you increase/decrease font size, navigate to the previous/next link, select the previous/next tab, scrolling one page up/down at a time and more. Your frequently used actions can be marked as favorites for quick access.

Last but not least, the app supports a Night mode which can be activated automatically between sunset and sunrise, calculated based on your Mac’s current location and time zone.  It’s an eye-friendly, dark color scheme optimized for use in dark environments.

The video embedded below shows off Remote Buddy in action, controlling a late-2012 Mac mini’s screen at 1080p resolution during full-screen video playback.

The full list of supported hardware for Remote Buddy is available here.

I have included a few more screenshots further below which will help you grasp the richness of options available to you in the settings interface of the Mac helper app.

Remote Buddy Mobile for iOS and watchOS

In addition to Remote Buddy Display for Mac, developers have provided mobile companion apps for your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Apple Watch in the form of Remote Buddy Mobile for iOS and watchOS.

These apps let you control Mac apps with the Apple Watch and iOS devices. Many marquee features of Remote Buddy Display for Apple TV are supported in iOS and watchOS companion apps, including screen sharing, actions and app control, Night mode, virtual remote, trackpad or keyboard (through dictation on the Apple Watch), and much more.

Availability

Remote Buddy requires an Intel-based Mac and is fully compatible with OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Remote Buddy can be purchased through the official website for €24.99, which works out to about thirty bucks. A free 30-day trial is available.

A lower-priced Remote Buddy Express can be purchased in the Mac App Store, but this app does not have some of Remote Buddy’s features, especially drivers, due to Apple’s sandboxing rules. You also cannot upgrade from Remote Buddy Express to Remote Buddy since Apple does not support paid upgrades in the Mac App Store.

Remote Buddy Mobile requires an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad with iOS 8 or later. The watch app requires an Apple Watch with watchOS 1.0 or later. Remote Buddy Mobile is available on a freemium basis in the App Store.

In-App Purchases will enable premium features such as screen sharing ($2.99), Night Mode ($1.99), unlimited favorites ($1.99), numeric keypad ($1.99). A one-time $4.99 In-App Purchase unlocks all premium features.

The free of charge tvOS companion app for Remote Buddy is available in the App Store on your Apple TV (search for “Remote Buddy Display”).

Waterlogue Review: Turn Your Photos Into Watercolor Paintings

Whether you like it or not, filter and effect apps are the most popular (and prevalent) in the photography category in the App Store. Thanks to digital technology, any amateur photographer can make a silly “selfie” look like a magazine shoot.

Whether you like it or not, filter and effect apps are the most popular (and prevalent) in the photography category in the App Store. Thanks to digital technology, any amateur photographer can make a silly “selfie” look like a magazine shoot.

You haven’t seen filter until you experience the artistic reimagining of your photos using Waterlogue. This is no mere effects app. It turns everything it touches into a watercolor painting…

Design

The background is dark gray with a texture that looks like the exterior of a painter’s portfolio. There is a border that splits the main image screen from the filter options. The filters are displayed across the bottom of the screen with thumbnail examples of each. If you swipe all the way to the right, you will see additional effects that adjust the look of the brush strokes and the darkness of the paint. You can also add or remove the border feature.

When you add a photo, it will produce the watercolor effect before your eyes. The canvas starts with just a light pencil outline of the image. Then, paint brushstrokes begin to appear. When the painting is finished, you can change the look by selecting a different filter.

When you have the new painting ready, you can share it on Instagram, Twitter, or Tumblr, and send a postcard through Sincerely. You can also save the image to your camera roll and send the picture directly through email.

App Use

To get started, tap the camera icon in the lower left corner of the screen. You can either select from one of the examples to experiment with, or use one of your own images. Pick a photo from your device’s camera roll, or take a picture from within the app.

Once the image is selected, the app will automatically begin recreating it with a watercolor filter. After a few seconds, the new painting will appear. You can experiment with different types of painting effects. There are 12 different styles that differ in wetness, outline thickness, color, and more. When you tap on a filter, a thumbnail preview will appear next to the current image in the lower right corner. This preview gives you an idea of what the final effect will look like, but it is not an exact recreation. Instead, it uses a somewhat pared down version. That is, the final effect will usually have more detail in it than the thumbnail preview.

If you think you will like the look of a different filter, tap the preview window and the app will repaint the image with the new look. You can also get rid of a preview window by swiping it off the screen to the right.

To change the look of the brushstroke, swipe the filter screen all the way to the right. When you see the section with numbers, tap one to increase or decrease the detail of the brushstroke. Depending on which number you choose, the painting will have more or less detail. Small produces less detail, while Giant produces much more detail.

Swipe to the right a bit more to access the color and dryness adjustment. The color ranges from Dark to Light. Dark produces a very wet brush effect that blends the colors together. Light makes it look like the paint was applied with a mostly dry brush.

Finally, you can leave the border on or remove it. If you are planning on posting your image to Instagram, I recommend removing the border unless your picture was already square before you turned it into a watercolor painting. Since the picture will need to be cropped for Instagram, it will cut off a portion of your picture unless you select a colored background instead. Frankly, the colored background looks bad.

Once your picture is created, you can share it on a number of different social networking sites. You can also save it to your camera roll to use in conjunction with another app. I took a picture of my Christmas tree and used the image to send digital holiday cards through Paperless Post. I didn’t even have to leave my couch.

The Good

The watercolor effect is amazing. The images that are used in the App Store summary don’t even give it justice. Your pictures come out truly looking like a watercolor painting.

Images are exported to your camera roll at high resolution.

The Bad

The processing time takes a while. I’d say, on average, it took about 15 seconds to render a new filter. Since the thumbnail preview doesn’t really show a full version of the effect, I found myself spending five minutes or more trying to find the perfect filter for an image.

Value

Waterlogue costs $3.99, which is a little high for a filter app that only does one thing. What makes this app worth the price is that, since it only does one thing, it really does it well. Detailed attention was paid to making images look legitimately like watercolor paintings. It is better looking than any watercolor effect I’ve ever seen.

Conclusion

This is one of those specialty apps that is hard to justify spending so much money on. You won’t be turning all of your pictures into watercolor paintings to post on Instagram or anything. However, I could see this as being a great tool for a photographer who wants to create a series to post to Tumblr or something. You know, like a Star Wars figure study in watercolor or something. This app is available for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Download it in the App Store for $2.99 (normally $3.99).

Related Apps

Tinrocket is known for its creative photo filter apps. I love Percolator. PhotoArtista – Haiku is another watercolor effect app.

How To Turn A Video Into A Live Photo

One of the benefits of owning an iPhone is using a live photo as your home and lock screen background.

Live Photos is part of the features that came with the iPhone 6s series in 2023. You can use the feature to record what happens 1.5 seconds before and after taking a photo. What you get is a picture with sound that moves a bit when you activate it.

Table of Contents

You probably use Live Photos with images from your phone’s gallery. But if you have a video you shot a while back, you can also use it as a live background. The good news is that you can convert a video into a Live Photo, but you’ll need a special third-party app for that.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to turn a video into a Live Photo on your iPhone in a few simple steps.

How to Turn a Video into a Live Photo on an iPhone or iPad

There’s no built-in app or way to turn a video into a Live Photo on your iPhone or iPad. 

Some of the best third-party apps you can use include intoLive, Video to Live Photo, TurnLive, and VideoToLive.

Note: Live Photos is available on iPhone 6s or later, iPad Air (3rd generation), iPad (5th generation), iPad Pro (2023 or later), and iPad mini (5th generation).

Download and install intoLive app from the App Store.

Launch the intoLive app and allow the required access permissions to your photo library. You’ll see all the files in your gallery or camera roll organized by type. From here, you can select the video you want to convert into a Live Photo.

Note: If you’re using the free version of the app, you can only make Live Photos of up to five seconds long. If you want a longer video, the Pro version allows you to make up to 30 seconds long videos.

In the video editing page, use the slider to trim the video to the part you want to turn into a Live Photo.

You can also change the video’s speed, apply filters and repeated loops. However, some options are locked behind the Pro version’s paywall.

Once you finish editing the video, tap Make on the upper right side. 

Choose the number of times you want the Live Photo to repeat.

Give the app a few seconds to create your Live Photo, and then tap Save Live Photo to your iPhone or iPad’s camera roll.

From here, you can open the Photos app, tap on the new Live Photo, and tap Share.

Tap Use as Wallpaper to set the new Live Photo as your home or lock screen background.

Next, tap Set and then select whether you want the Live Photo on your home screen, lock screen, or both screens.

How to Turn a GIF into a Live Photo on iPhone or iPad

You can also turn your favorite GIF into a Live Photo, but you’ll need a third-party app. For this guide, we’ll use GIPHY, which is free and has the most extensive library of GIFs, stickers, and clips.

Download and install GIPHY on your iPhone or iPad and launch the app.

Select the GIF that you want to turn into a Live Photo, tap the three vertical dots on the right side of your screen.

Tap Convert to Live Photo.

Select full-screen or fit-to-screen.

Your new Live Photo will be available in your Camera Roll. From here, you can set it as live wallpaper or background on your device’s home or lock screen.

Never Have Boring Backgrounds Again

Live Photos can spice up your iPhone or iPad beyond the standard, static wallpapers. 

If you don’t want the pre-installed options, you can make your Live Photos from videos or GIFs and customize your device in a fun, unique way.

Geektool: Turn Your Mac’s Desktop Into An Information Center

Being a geek, you have the urge to modify everything you own. That’s of course applies to your desktop as well. You saw how your Linux friends can modify their desktop and display information with Conky and you are dying to have the same setting in Mac. If that is the case, then GeekTool is the one you are looking for.

GeekTool is a System Preferences module for Mac OS 10.5. It allows you to display information on your Mac desktop so you can quickly check out the time, your Twitter stream, or any other things without any hassle.

Let’s get our hands dirty, shall we?

To fully utilize GeekTool, you got to have a simple knowledge of shell command. But don’t worry, we will guide you through and make it easy for you.

Download GeekTool and install it in your Mac.

Adding day, date and time to the desktop

Open GeekTool and drag the shell icon to the desktop.

A blank holder and a configuration window will appear. The holder is where your information will appear. You can drag and move it to the position you desire. The configuration window is where you customize the shell command, font size, color etc.

In the configuration window, add the following command to the Command field.

date '+%H:%M.%S'

The above command will produce a clock that displays time in 24 hour format, minutes and seconds. It is important to note that for this script to be properly effective you have to update it every second, or every minute (naturally you just put 60 in the Refresh Every field) if you do not include the %S portion of the command.

After you have the clock on your desktop, drag another shell script onto the desktop and add the Month by using

date +%B

then drop another one on your desktop and add the command

date +%d

in order to put the number on the desktop. Once you have all these dropped on to the desktop you can start changing the fonts to whatever you desire, making them very personalized in the process.

Adding Twitter stream to your desktop

If you want a twitter stream on your desktop, then the command is

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