The thing that makes this story really noteworthy is that Vonage is undercutting Skype’s international long distance rates by an incredible 30%. It’s similar to the tact Vonage took with their home phone service, coming in at a price that is nearly impossible for competitors to compete with. It will be interesting to see if this puts any pressure on Skype to lower their rates for calling internationally.

Any calls made are charged through credits purchased within the application. Because these credits are added through iTunes or Android, there is no need to give Vonage your credit card information.

For the launch of the app, users will get free calls to any phone in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico. This is a limited time offer, so if you want to take advantage you will need to get the application right away.

Here’s the application links:

• Android Link
• iTunes Link

Source: Venture Beat

Now it’s time to dig deep and see what the web has to offer the Dragonborn. The following resources will aid you in clearing dungeons, navigating the province, mastering alchemy and a whole lot more.

I was going to put a joke here, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

Reference & Walkthrough

You can’t beat a well-maintained wiki when it comes to crowdsourcing information about video games, and Skyrim isn’t short on wikis. The two I would recommend are the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP, established in 1995) and the Elder Scrolls at Wikia.

Both of these sites feature a healthy, constantly growing database of pretty much everything the game throws at you. Mission walkthroughs, character biographies, item locations – pretty much everything you need to know. Be warned though, it’s easy to spoil quests and developing storylines by spending too much time reading articles. Skyrim’s entry on GameFAQs also has a number of extremely detailed walkthroughs.

If it’s a giant annotated map you’re after then check out GameBanshee’s 9.34MB high-resolution .PNG which also comes in 9-page PDF form for easy printing as a 3×3 poster for your wall (you geek).

Alchemy & Ingredients

The simplest way of discovering an ingredient’s effect is by eating it and seeing what happens to you. If you’re not keen on poisoning yourself or would rather not waste your precious ingredients then one of the many alchemy guides is bound to suit.

There are two rather awesome tools for budding alchemists, the first being the Skyrim Alchemy Recipes Finder. Simply add a few ingredients (or all of them for the full list) and all possible potions will be revealed to you. This utility is useful for finding out what certain ingredients do without wasting anything.

You can also use Josh Blevins’ Alchemy Effects & Ingredients to reverse look-up an effect for a list of ingredients. Traditional types who like long plain text lists should take a look at Ahlyis’ Alchemy Guide on GameFAQs which has full potions, ingredients and effects lists.

Character Building

Building a character can present you with some of the toughest decisions in the game, so planning your perks is the best way to ensure your character blossoms into the dragon slaying hero you desire.

Thankfully it’s easy to do just that with the Skyrim Perk Calculator. Use it to go hog wild and build the character of your dreams then plan your path to power, save and start exploring the world. iOS and Android users can look forward to mobile apps soon.

There is also a fairly lengthy character development guide on GameFAQs as well as this more condensed version from SegmentNext.

PC Gamers & Modding

Those of you enjoying the PC version of the game are lucky enough to be able to modify it but also have the added obstacle of performance issues. If you are suffering from poor framerates or just think your game could run smoother then have a look at nVidia’s Skyrim tweak guide, it even comes with Bethesda’s approval.

As for mods then look no further than Skyrim Nexus. There really are quite a lot of mods on this site with new ones being released regularly. If you fancy modding your game but don’t know where to start then you could always take some inspiration from PC Gamer’s Top 25 Skyrim mods.

Conclusion

If you’ve not yet played Skyrim then you have a fantastic experience in store if beautiful open-world RPGs are your thing. Even if you’re a well-seasoned adventurer, hopefully some of these resources will help you out next time you decide to start a new character.

If you have any of your own recommendations, links or just an opinion then add a comment below.

Well, I’m here to tell you that letting your cats play with iPad cat toys is the most fun you and they are going to have this month. Surprisingly, cats (at least mine) tend to be very gentle on the screen and don’t really use their claws, and seeing them trying to find the critters on the screen under the iPad is positively hilarious. So if you feel ready now, and think you’re up to trying, here are 6 great apps that turn your iPad into an awesome cat toy. You won’t regret it!

Friskies JitterBug [iTunes]

This game by Friskies was definitely one of the favorites. When you load it, you can either choose “Play Game” or “Advanced”. In Advanced, you can choose how many bugs you want to see of each, and choose to play the endless mode, which basically lets your cat play forever and ever.

If you start the game through the Advanced screen, you will get a totally black screen with cute bugs on it. My cats loved this. When the cat taps on a bug, it disappears, but new ones enter all the time. The game has no sound. If it’s not in endless mode, the cat can “win” by killing all the bugs.

If you don’t enter the game through the advanced screen, you will get a timed game with prompts and levels, which my cats found somewhat less appealing.

Cat Fishing [iTunes] & Cat Fishing 2 [iTunes]

These are two more games by Friskies, which are very similar to one another and are therefore included under the same title. The goal of the game is for the cat to tap on the fish. When it does, they disappear. Here, too, there is no sound.

In Cat Fishing, there’s just this screen with one fish, which is replaced by a new one when the cat taps it. There’s a “kill count” on the top right corner.

Cat Fishing 2 is a bit more complex, with more than one fish at a time, and a timer and levels that keep prompting and switching. As with JitterBug, my cats loved the fish, not so much the prompts.

Game For Cats [iTunes]

Game for Cats are really trying to sell you more games, but their free version is actually quite good too. When you launch the app, you will see this screen. The cheese version on the right requires an in-app purchase, but the laser version on the left is totally free.

If your cats like to play with a laser pointer, they’re going to love this. The laser dot moves around the screen at a surprisingly lifelike way, and is really calling out to cats to catch it. The dot is a bit hard to catch, but if they manage to do it, it blows up with a small ding sound, and a new one appears.

To exit the game, tap the paw icon on the bottom 5 times in a row (hopefully your cats can’t do this).

Cat Toys Lite [iTunes]

In this game, your cat gets to play with a purple mouse trapped in a box. You can control the speed of the mouse, and toggle sounds on and off. When your cat taps the mouse, it speeds up, and if sounds are on, it also squeaks.

Something about the mouse’s movements really caught my cats’ eye, and they went to great lengths trying to catch it. You can also get the full version for $0.99, which lets you choose between 5 different toys.

Cat Toy [iTunes]

Now this is a good one. Cat Toy is actually an iPhone app, one of those you have to blow up to fit the iPad screen, but if your cats are not too picky about their graphics, it’s not a problem.

The game lets you choose between four different modes: Itsy (spider), Flutter (butterfly), Zapper (laser) and Squeak (mouse).

The favorite in my house was the mouse, hands down. In this mode, the mouse is running around the screen, and then vanishes off it. While it’s gone, you hear scratching sounds that simply drove my cats crazy. They were sure the mouse was hiding under the iPad.

The other modes are fun too, but not as good as this. The only problem was that my cats were so enthusiastic, they kept activating multi-touch gestures and switching apps. This only happened with this app.

Catch The Mouse Cat Game [iTunes – $0.99]

As the only paid app on this lineup, Catch the Mouse is worth the 99¢, but (at least for my cats) only if you turn off the sound.

What you get in this game is a cute orange mouse, and it’s running around the screen for dear life. The sounds, unfortunately, are bit over the top, and my cats were not really buying it. They sat there looking at the thing, but it was making such unbelievable sounds, they weren’t engaged.

The magic happened when I turned off the sound. Suddenly, the mouse became very attractive, and the hits counter started climbing. If you don’t like orange on black, there are 5 different background colors to choose from, and 3 different mouse colors.

Bottom Line

Turning the iPad into a cat toy is officially a success. The apps are great, and the cats had loads of fun (and so did us humans).

What do your cats think of these games? Or do you think it’s totally crazy to even try? Do you know any more cool cat games for the iPad? Share everything in the comments.

Feed Notifier has been my best-kept secret for a long time. I fired up Google and began searching up for a software that would put breaking news and RSS updates in my face while remaining lightweight, portable, and effective. It took a long time, but I found this beautiful baby.

I work online, and when the Internet is your workplace then you know things move fast. You’ve got to keep up with trends and you’ve got to be on the ball or you might miss out on opportunities, excitement, or (in my case) money. Feed Notifier does a fantastic job of delivering RSS notifications more effectively than any software I’ve used. It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or just someone who likes to keep up to date with the news.

Let’s go over some features:

• It’s portable. You know I love throwing things in Dropbox and on a flash drive.
• It supports RSS, Atom, and literally every other protocol.
• It is incredibly smooth and clean looking, no matter how you skin it.
• You can configure how often you want to poll each feed so that you aren’t stressing your CPU or bandwidth.
• You can customize the popup duration, size, position, opacity, etc.
• The popup is non-instrusive.
• It’s multi-threaded.
• You can enable and disable feeds, rather than deleting ones you might want to use again in the future.
• It supports favicons.

The list goes on and on and on, and it’s best if you read into the features on their official website.

Here are a few live shots of the configurable options so you know exactly what you’re getting into. This screenshot shows a list of all feeds.

This screenshot shows the configurable popup options.

This screenshot shows the other associated options.

I’ve got mine popping up in the bottom right-hand corner of my screen, looking something like:

Download Feed Notifier and let me show you how to add MakeUseOf as your first feed!

• Open the application and right click your tray icon, then click “Preferences…”.
• Click the “Add…” button and enter the MakeUseOf RSS feed URL or my MakeUseOf author feed URL if you like me.

• Click “Next >” and proceed to where the feed’s name will be automatically fetched and you’ll be able to adjust your options:

These are the recommended settings that I’d use for the MakeUseOf feed. Awesomely enough, these are the defaults that Feed Notifier suggests, also. If you’re using my feed, check every day instead of every hour.

After you apply, a few of the latest RSS posts may automatically pop up. If it does, and you’re uninterested in letting them scroll on through, just click the fast forward button and close it out. From there on, you’ll get the latest, streaming updates.

If you’re a fan of RSS in general, check out these other articles:

• How RSS Feeds Work In Simple Terms
• Two Easy Tips To Manage Your Unread RSS Feeds Better
• 6 Of The Best Free RSS Readers For The iPad

And that’s all. I hope you guys manage to enjoy the convenience and efficiency that Feed Notifier provides just as much as I do. If you come across any problems, just drop me a line in the comments and I’ll give you a hand.

There are plenty of flash-card applications around, including the amazing AnkiDroid. But while AnkiDroid is an incredible app, it’s not a game. I’m a big believer in education through games. I think learning should be as fun and engaging as possible, and that the more interested you are, the better your retention will be.  So, if you like your study mixed in with a bit of fun, keep reading for two fine picks from the Market.

Word Jam

Word Jam is composed of several different games, all aimed at helping you learn and retain new words. Above you can see “recall words”, a mode that gives you a word and has you guess the meaning. And here’s Match Words, where you stretch lines between words and their meanings:

There’s also a Hangman game:

If you don’t know what the word is, you can give up and reveal it (or just “die”, in which case the game would show you the word).

Another game mode worthy of mention is the crossword puzzle:

There are better crossword puzzle games for Android (which I may cover in a separate post), but Word Jam is not just a crossword puzzle, and can engage you in six different ways. Apart from the four we’ve seen, the game also offers Word Jumble and Word Search.

In Word Jumble, you must reorder letters to create a word. Word Search provides you with a collection of related words around a theme (“Groupings of people or objects”), and then you must find those words on a board. All in all, a fun collection of games with a simple aesthetic.

Wordaholic

Wordaholic is actually two different games: Wordaholic – Free Word Find and Wordaholic – Free Word Search. Pretty confusing (why not make it into one app?) but still fun. Both games let you play a hexagonal board full of random letters, where your goal is to create words. The “Find” variant gives you just the board, and you find any words you already know. The “Search” variant, more relevant to this post, is more like a crossword puzzle. That’s the one you see in the screenshot above. The game gives you a little riddle, and you need to figure out the word first, and then find that word on the board. Pretty challenging, because it involves switching between two different modes of thinking every turn.

Some of the questions are very tricky, such as “???? is an atomic element with the atomic number 10”. This is where the Hint button comes in handy: Tap it once for a tiny hint (“Four letters, starts with N”). If you still can’t figure out what it is, tap it again and the game will reveal the word (“The word is NEON”).

The game also offers an Easy mode, in which the words are already listed at the bottom of the screen and you just need to find them. This mode is still useful for learning new words, because you can tap a word to get its definition within the game:

Quite a lovely game for picking up some new words. I like the form factor. Hexagons always remind me of strategy games.

Your Own Favorites?

When it comes to word games on Android, the most popular ones are Words with Friends and Wordfeud. That’s why I didn’t include them in the post (I did include them in the Best of Android list). But do you play anything else that has to do with words? If so, do share in the comments.

Image Credit: ShutterStock

It’s a neat idea similar to IMDB, where TV shows are listed, actors are noted and the individual outfits worn in each episode are given their own page, dedicated to finding the best match. It’s still in alpha stage so far, but it’s clearly going to be a hit. This method of browsing TV shows and actors, then cruising directly to shopping links from the site is precisely what shoppers want.

Log In With Facebook

There’s no need to log in, but if you want to do so, your Facebook login will allow you to collect your favourite outfits for referring to later. It’s also useful if you want to contribute to the similar items for outfits you’ve seen on Curvio.

Browse TV Shows

To begin with, Curvio has started with a small selection of TV shows, which include Gossip Girl and Glee. Despite the small number of TV shows available currently, this is still a great number of actors, episodes and outfits.

Browse The Stars

Check out the Stars page to find a character with your taste in clothing. Or perhaps you could look up an actor with your colouring or body shape if you want to get some good ideas about what might suit you.

Browsing Clothing Items

Once you’ve clicked on an actor, you see a page of their best outfits. Each of those outfits has its own page where you can see all the outfits people consider to be similar. Prices are easy to spot and it clicks straight through to somewhere you can purchase the clothes. It’s pretty much ideal.

Launch Status

The Curvio site is really new and is yet to grow in scope and see the community support which will supply the very best similar clothing links. However, there’s still a lot of great exploring that can be done as it is – and you know that it’s only going to get better.

If you’re a fan of Curvio, contact the staff and let them know which TV shows you’d love to see next or which retailers they could team up with. Curvio staff have said they’re keen to work with small fashion designers as well, so if this is you and you’re looking for some exposure, then talk to them now!

More Fashion

Check out some more fashion posts you might like  here:

• Velvet Brigade – Show Off Your Fashion Style With A Chance To Get Your Designs Made
• Do You Have A Photo Of A Great Fashion Item? Here Is How To Find Out Where To Get It!
• Use Polyvore To Create Or Find A New Fashion Style For Yourself
• 5 Style Websites To Buy Cheap Trendy Clothes

Which TV shows should Curvio add next?

Losing the data – or the phone itself – can prove difficult to deal with, depending on how highly you rate the phone and what importance you place on the data stored therein. Having a backup plan in case of emergency is certainly recommended. But to have a plan of action, you need to know what the threats are. Fortunately there are competent, free solutions available on all four popular smartphone platforms.

Anti-Malware

Let’s be realistic – modern smartphones offer more threats to your personal safety than a computer.

Skilled hackers can use malware to scrape personal data off your phone, leaving you in debt when they take credit out in your name a few minutes later. With an always-on Internet connection in your pocket you might get an email from your bank informing you of the huge overdraft you didn’t apply for, but by then it will be too late.

Although such cases are currently rare, you obviously need to be aware of the possibilities and protect against these types of threat. The best answer here is to avoid visiting unsafe websites and installing untrustworthy apps from unofficial sources onto your phone, but if you absolutely must do this, make sure you protect yourself with some anti-malware software.

Lookout Security & Antivirus for Android phones is a suitable response, while iPhone and Windows Phone owners should ensure their devices are not unlocked or jailbroken. Concerns about transferring data to your phone from your computer can easily be addressed by installing anti-malware software for Windows or Mac OS X.

Encrypting Data

Both remote threats and those closer to home (such as having your phone stolen) can be partially addressed by encrypting data. Personal data stored on your phone can then only be accessed by the person with the encryption key – you. Should your device be hacked remotely or stolen it will prove next to impossible for the perpetrators to be able to read the data you have stored on your smartphone.

Android owners can use SecureMemo to keep data, passwords, and other data secure while SecurePhoto, meanwhile, provides security for photos stored on your phone.

If you use iPhone 3GS or later, you will have the advantage of native encryption while the My Eyes Only – Secure Password Manager app is a popular choice for storing notes, passwords and credit card data.

BlackBerry also offers native encryption and you might choose to secure your data using an app such as iLocker Lite to lock specific software, preventing unauthorized access.

Windows Phone users meanwhile don’t have the advantage of native encryption but unlike Android handsets don’t have an (easily) removable MicroSD card. Hidden Pass is the most popular app for encrypting personal data on this platform.

Tracing A Stolen Phone

As we’ve already discussed, smartphones are increasingly popular targets for thieves who might be looking for personal data, a quick way to make a phone call or hardware that they can sell to support their chosen lifestyle.

Whether you have been able to protect the data on your phone or not, you should be prepared to trace the device in the event of loss or theft. This is something that can be achieved using native software or third party apps.

Android users can take advantage of the Plan B app which will email your phone’s location to your Gmail address when you use another device to text the word “locate”.

Apple iPhone’s Find My Phone tool will locate the device on a map and allow you to remotely play a ringtone, display a message, remotely lock and even wipe it. Windows Phone users have a similar option also called Find My Phone which offers the same functionality but is native to the platform.

BlackBerry doesn’t have a such a system, although lost devices can be wiped by your BES administrator.

Backing Up To The Cloud

If you have concerns over the safety of data on your phone you can store it online or at the very least save a backup to the cloud. This can then be accessed via a web browser from another device or computer, allowing you to at the very least keep your data if your phone is stolen.

Naturally Apple iPhones have access to the iCloud service which effortlessly backs up apps and data, while Windows Phone owners have SkyDrive. Meanwhile Android offers data synchronization with Google for standard data such as calendar, contacts and emails.

Dropbox apps are available free for all platforms, meanwhile, including BlackBerry.

Conclusion

With suitable responses in place to deal with any of these possibilities, you should find that in most cases you can overcome data loss and phone loss. There is even a chance that your device can be retrieved or returned to working order.

In the meantime, don’t leave anything to chance. Keep your phone safe at all times, use the apps suggested above to pre-empt any threats or misuse of your handset and remember to take insurance on the device. Your mobile phone network will be able to refer you to their favoured broker, although you should check if you have any suitable cover already via other insurance policies.

If you have an Android device running version 4.0 or higher, you will want to download this browser, because the improvements are very noticeable. The feature list of Google Chrome is truly something special. For example, if you are near a cluster of links, and the browser detects you may have a tough time it hitting the right one, it will automatically launch a little magnifying glass to guide you where you need to go.

One really cool feature is that you can actually see the tabs you have open on your computer from your phone. So if you are in the middle of something, you can continue where you left off without missing a beat.

It sounds like Google has taken the mobile browser to another level. It’s faster, more feature packed and all around better; that is as long as you own a Galaxy Nexus, Transformer Prime, Xoom, and the Nexus S.

Android Marketplace Link

Source: TechCrunch

You don’t need any plugin to listen to podcasts, but the method of doing so isn’t entirely obvious and the official documentation isn’t exactly helpful. I spent two weeks playing around with plugins that didn’t really help before stumbling upon this method, so I feel like I should share it.

Simply put, there are no good plugins, as of this writing, for managing your podcasts in XBMC, but there is a way to listen to and watch podcasts by default. Your media center will be way better if you do this.

Adding Your Podcast Using The GUI

So what’s the trick? Basically, it’s adding the RSS feed as a media source. I know, it’s not intuitive. The media source menu seems like a place to add folders with media files and nothing else, but that’s simply not the case.

Head to the “File” menu of the music or video section of XBMC, depending on what sort of podcast you are adding. Then click “Add Source.” Instead of adding a folder on your computer, type the RSS feed yourself, beginning with “rss://” instead of “http://”.

So far as I can tell, you can’t paste the URL into XBMC, meaning you’ll have to type the URL by hand. Keep reading if this is too much work; there’s another method.

Repeat the process for all of your podcasts, being sure to put video and audio podcasts in their proper places. That’s it; you can now stream music from your podcasts by browsing the “File” section whenever you like.

Editing Sources.xml

Do you prefer editing a text file rather than messing around with the GUI? That makes sense. You can manually add your sources in Sources.xml, if you’re geeky enough to figure it out.

Where is Sources.xml? It depends what operating system you’re using. Here’s the list:

• Windows XP: Documents and Settings\Application Data\XBMC\userdata\
  
• Vista/Windows 7: Users\\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\
  
• Mac OS X: /Users//Library/Application Support/XBMC/userdata/
  
• iOS: /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/userdata/
  
• Linux: $HOME/.xbmc/userdata/

Once you’ve found the file, you’re going to need to add code. Use this code:

<source>
<name>RSS Feed</name>
<path>rss://</path>
</source>


You’re going to need to replace “RSS Feed” with the name of your podcast, and “rss://” with the URL of your podcast. Remember: you need to replace “http://” with “rss://” or this may not work. You’re also going to want to make sure that audio podcasts are within this <music> tag, while video ones are within the <video> tag.

Are you confused by this method? Stick to the GUI, then, but know that learning this can save you time.

Using The Favorites

Once you’ve added your podcasts you’re going to want to browse them regularly. They’ll be a lot easier to find if you add them to your favorites. Doing so is easy – simply right-click on the podcast in the “File” menu, or press the “C” key while the podcast is selected. Then click “Add to Favorites”

You can add just about anything to your favorites, including shows and sections from addons and even shows on Hulu, so this menu will quickly become the center of your media center.

Conclusion

XBMC is complicated, but rewarding. Adding podcasts is no exception. I don’t know why this needed to be so hard, but I really like having access now that I figured it out. I hope I’ve helped you solve a problem too.

What podcasts do you like to watch or listen to on your media center? Share, along with any other thoughts, in the comments below.