Android

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

It looks as if fall could be a very busy season for Microsoft. The software maker appears poised to release Office for iPad and Android tablets and an Outlook Web app for iOS this fall, according to reports.  Although officially Microsoft has no comment, reports have surfaced that the full suite of Office apps will have a November release, according to website BGR. And the app is said to look almost identical to the leaked images from a few months ago, according to BGR's source.

Forget Angry Birds. Your smartphone can be a powerful tool for improving your overall fitness if you give it half a chance. Whether you're a couch potato looking to start an exercise routine or a veteran runner looking to cross-train, there's an app for that. Our picks of some of the best downloads to get you moving, measure your progress and keep you motivated: Yoga With Janet Stone ($4.99 iPhone and iPad) There are a lot of yoga apps out there, but few are as sophisticated as this new release.

Amazon began rolling out a mobile version of its Appstore's Test Drive feature, which lets users try apps before they buy them. The beta version of the new feature became available to certain types of Android phones Tuesday, the company announced on a blog. Test Drive will let users try out more than 5,000 Android apps before deciding whether or not they'd like to purchase them right from their phone.

The Mega Millions jackpot is still up for grabs at $290 million and counting, one of the biggest jackpots ever . You may have the numbers you're loyal to, but some of us are fairly random about it. As with everything, there's an app for that. If you're in one of the 42 states -- yes, California is one -- then you can take a chance. The game is simple, as Rene Lynch at the Nation Now blog explains : "Players pick six numbers from two different pools: The first five are numbers from 1 to 56, and the sixth is chosen from numbers 1 to 46. You win by matching all six numbers.

To help make your next trip to Las Vegas a winner, I tested iPhone apps (they also work on iPod Touch and iPad) that you can use to book a room, sharpen your card skills or even say, "I do. " Many have an Android version that works on multiple platforms, including phones and tablets from Motorola, Samsung and Nokia. Las Vegas Reality Pros: An augmented reality app uses your phone's camera and GPS to navigate the Strip. If you're not in Vegas, it offers a virtual tour — which placed the Mandalay Bay near my sofa and landed the Tropicana on my cat. Cons: The airport and convention center are the only off-Strip locations.

Over the years, Google has changed the way we search online and the way many businesses advertise online. With Android, the company has built the most popular smartphone operating system in the world. And now the tech giant is looking to change the way we use punch cards. The "buy five subs, get the sixth free" card you have in your wallet; the "half off every five cups of coffee" ticket floating at the bottom of your purse -- Google is hoping someday you'll ditch the paper punch cards in favor of an app called Punchd . The app, as you might expect, stores digital versions of loyalty cards on your smartphone and enables you to search for nearby businesses that use Punchd to reward faithful patrons.

A new furor has erupted over digital privacy concerns following disclosures that Twitter Inc. and other social networking companies are reaching into people's smartphones and retrieving their personal contact information without getting explicit permission. Twitter acknowledged this week that anyone who used its "Find Friends" feature on iPhones and Android phones was also sending every phone number and email address in his or her address book to the company, something that was not made clear to users.

The Instagram app for Android is my new drug. It makes me frame everything as a potential snapshot to share. Beet sprouts in my garden. Dust bunnies in the hallway. Newspapers obscuring my view. A dead cockroach at work. Click, click, click. And the filters make it all look like "art. " Or at least photos that came from my childhood. Apparently, I wasn't the only one jonesing to get the app. Instagram for Android was downloaded a million times in less than 24 hours, CNET reports . Although I've had Instagram on my iPhone since the app was released, strangely enough, I can't remember ever using it. And I'm a snapping fool on my iPhone.

Google Inc. is updating its Android operating system to fix a security flaw that is believed to have left millions of smartphones and tablets vulnerable to personal data leaks. The flaw "could, under certain circumstances, allow a third party access to data available in calendar and contacts," a Google spokesman said in a statement. "This fix requires no action from users and will roll out globally over the next few days. " The fix is being issued for each version of Android released, and phones and tablets began automatically getting the updates Wednesday, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak about the software update.

Forget Angry Birds. Your smartphone can be a powerful tool for improving your overall fitness if you give it half a chance. Whether you're a couch potato looking to start an exercise routine or a veteran runner looking to cross-train, there's an app for that. Our picks of some of the best downloads to get you moving, measure your progress and keep you motivated: Yoga With Janet Stone ($4.99 iPhone and iPad) There are a lot of yoga apps out there, but few are as sophisticated as this new release.

In another move to beef up its mobile offering, Facebook has hired the entire staff of Lightbox, a tiny start-up known for its popular photo sharing app for Android smartphones. The hiring of the seven-person team at Lightbox comes as the social network nears what is expected to be the largest ever Internet initial public offering. Investors have been weighing the value of Facebook and have questioned how well it will be able to generate ad revenue from mobile devices. Facebook made more than $3 billion off of ads seen on its laptop and desktop website in 2011 but has not yet figured out how to monetize its 500 million mobile app users.

Jurors deciding whetherGoogle Inc.stole Oracle Inc.'s technology are deadlocked on one of three questions about whether the search engine provider infringed copyrights to build Android software. U.S. Judge William Alsup in San Francisco, presiding over an intellectual property trial in its third week, sent the jurors home Friday and ordered them to return Monday for more deliberations. Alsup had said he would accept a partial verdict Friday and changed his plan after talking privately with Oracle's and Google's lawyers.

The judge in  Oracle Corp.'s copyright-infringement lawsuit against  Google Inc.  may accept a partial verdict. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said Friday that he had a "strong inclination" to accept a partial verdict in the case, an outcome that Google opposes. The jury has been weighing whether Google infringed parts of Oracle's Java programming language to develop the Android operating system for smartphones, now running on 300 million devices. The panel heard two weeks of testimony from Oracle and Google executives, including their chief executive officers.

Research in Motion, hoping for a boost for its struggling smartphones, gave developers a sneak peek at its upcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system, expected to be released sometime this year. At the company's BlackBerry World 2012 event in Orlando, Fla., on Tuesday, new Chief Executive Thorsten Heins unveiled a prototype of the system in front of 5,000 customers, developers and other attendees. In a 47-second video that the company also shared online, a customer uses a BlackBerry 10 smartphone to scroll through emails and crisp photos; quickly type, with the help of predictive text, on a touch screen; watch videos; and sync the phone to a television screen.

Plan a private event, ask a friend to lunch or gather a large gaggle of people for a public meet-up - all from your smartphone or device. Great for business or leisure. Name: GiddyUp Available for: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android What it does: Lets you organize events by inviting contacts on your iPhone, iPad, Android, and Facebook and Twitter accounts. Cost: Free What's hot: It's liberating to skip the back-and-forth email chains when planning a lunch or party.

If you are one of the 104 million people in the U.S. who own a smartphone, chances are it's running Google Android, ComScore said in a report released Tuesday. ComScore's report focused on mobile use for the three months ending in February. After surveying more than 30,000 mobile phone subscribers, the company found that Google has continued to grow its share in the U.S. market with 50.1% of all smartphone subscribers using an Android-based phone. In November, Android had 46.9% of the market share.

When I first got my iPhone, I was thrilled to discover Convertbot, which made it fun and easy to convert ingredient quantities or temperatures from my British cookbooks. That app, it turned out, was just a taste of the onslaught of food and wine apps to come ? so many, you'd have to be a full-time app tester to try them all out. (Unfortunately, I have another job.) But I do try a lot. Here are apps for the iPhone that I've found most useful. Several are also available on the Android platform.

The Kindle Fire appears to be burning up its competition — on the Android side, anyway. Amazon.com Inc.'s tablet computer is catching on in a big way in the U.S., accounting by end of February for 54.4% of tablets that run Google Inc.'s Android system software. That represented a near doubling of the Fire's Android market share since December, when it was at 29.4%, according to new data from ComScore Inc. The Fire first went on sale in November. In a way, the Kindle Fire is gobbling up the small fish in the pond — far outpacing Samsung's Galaxy Tab (15.4% of Android)

The first official Angry Birds Land will open Saturday at Sarkanniemi Adventure Park in Finland with rides and games themed to the popular smart phone app. PHOTOS: Angry Birds Land at European theme park Located about two hours north of Helsinki, Sarkanniemi has partnered with Finnish-based gamemaker Rovio to bring the virtual world of battling birds and pigs into the fantasy world of a theme park. With more than 500 million downloads, the iPhone and Android cellphone game challenges players to launch birds at towering pig fortresses in hopes of destroying the defensive structures and recovering pilfered eggs.