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"Twitter announced on Monday that its long-awaited Vine app for Android smartphones will soon be available. Vine requires Android 4.0 or higher, and though many features from the iOS app are currently missing, Twitter says that the Android version will soon have all of the features currently available on iOS. Things such as front-facing camera support, search, mentions and hashtags, and even Facebook sharing are planned to arrive in the coming weeks. But Android users are getting one unique feature that's not available for iOS: zoom. Twitter also alluded to future features that "can only exist on the Android platform.""

But there's a big downside to this Android growth: Severe fragmentation in the Android market means that startups must tune and debug their apps against a whole range of official Android versions, carrier tweaks, internal smartphone hardware, and external screen dimensions. Pundits have warned about this for years, but now the problem has come home to roost.

"Microsoft's Office suite for iPad, iPhone, and Android is now free. In a surprise move, the software giant is shaking up its mobile Office strategy to keep consumers hooked to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Starting today, you'll no longer need an Office 365 subscription to edit documents or store them in the cloud. The move comes just days after Microsoft announced a strategic partnership with Dropbox to integrate the cloud storage service into Office across desktop, mobile, and the web. You can now download Office for iPad and store all your documents on Dropbox without paying Microsoft anything at all. Microsoft is also releasing a brand new iPhone app today, alongside a preview of Office for Android tablets, all with Dropbox integration."

Smartphone usage continues to climb in the U.S. More than three out of five (61%) mobile subscribers in the U.S. owned a smartphone during the most recent three-month period (March-May 2013), up more than 10 percent since smartphones became the mobile majority in early 2012. When it comes operating system preference, Apple remained the top smartphone manufacturer in the U.S., while the majority of smartphone owners used Android OS handsets. Fifty-three percent of smartphone owners used the Android OS, and 40 percent owned iPhones.

"A company you've probably heard of before called Always Innovating is working on a pretty awesome little project for smartphones. It's called the MeCam and is essentially a mini helicopter they're calling a Nano-Copter complete with video recording and streaming capabilities. The MeCam is designed to follow you around and record every moment. You can stream that video right to your Android phone and even share it to your social site of preference or YouTube."

The big takeaway here is pretty clear, in terms of the top two players: Android is on fire because of choice, availability and price point in emerging markets focused on shifting to smartphones from feature phones on limited budgets. That means it's even more crucial to watch what Apple debuts this fall in terms of a low-cost iPhone device, which is rumored to be based around the iPhone 5 and sport a plastic back that's cheaper to produce.

"At its Android and Chrome event in San Francisco today, Google announced that it is bringing textbooks to the Google Play store so students will be able to purchase and rent their textbooks for their Android devices and for reading on the web."

To add the Galaxy Camera to a Share Everything Plan, you can even upgrade for a special price of $5. AT&T recently started carrying the device for $499 in November. The camera has a 16-megapixel CMOS sensor with 21x zoom. But when you flip that bad boy over, you won't see a little 2-inch LCD. Instead, you'll be met with the familiar Android homescreen (Jelly Bean, no less), on a 4.8-inch 720p SLCD display.

Net Texts: The App for Replacing or Supplementing Textbooks Net Texts helps schools replace or supplement textbooks with customized multimedia courses delivered to students' iPads, Android tablets, and laptops!

"Dedicated point-and-shoot digital cameras and lower-end camcorders are surely facing a slow road to extinction, with many modern phones capable of shooting ridiculously high-quality photos and videos. But can your phone really do it all, from start to finish, without connecting up to your PC? Well of course it can."

"Educators now have 100s of fantastic free online tools to help their students create and learn through digital storytelling. Many of these online tools have free apps available on i-devices and Android devices. Through digital storytelling we motivate our learners to apply, contextualize, visualize, and personalize the knowledge they learn."

"Twitter will shut down multiple TweetDeck apps to focus on the product's web-based version, the microblogging service announced Monday. In yet another sign of the battle between social media's two biggest players, Facebook integration will be removed, too."

Snapchat is a new way to share moments with friends. Snap an ugly selfie or a video, add a caption, and send it to a friend (or maybe a few). They'll receive it, laugh, and then the snap disappears. The image might be a little grainy, and you may not look your best, but that's the point. It's about the moment, a connection between friends, and not just a pretty picture.

"Thanks to the game Babylonian Twins, iPhone and Android users can explore creative renditions of monuments in and near ancient Babylon, including the legendary hanging gardens, the Ishtar gate and processional way, and the ziggurat some believe to be the Biblical Tower of Babel."

"Still, I'll agree with CNET editor Molly Wood when she observed that, "They missed the price point that would have crushed the competition." As far as I'm concerned, Apple may have the edge when it comes to product lore and sheer ubiquity, but for those deliberately seeking an affordable, portable in-between device, we're looking at a much more level playing field for smaller-size slates -- and an open door for future Android and Windows 8 tablets."

"How To Use Evernote, The Missing Manual is a free 34 page guide to using Evernote. The guide will help you use Evernote in your web browser, on your iPad, on your Android tablet, on your phone, and on your desktop. The guide is available to download as a PDF or EPub."

Datastores will run in the background, so apps will still work just fine, even if they're not connected to Dropbox. But when they do connect they will sync up with the Dropbox data center, giving apps a way to synch up between your PC, your tablet and your phone. "All of this is to really to help create this fabric that ties your stuff together," says Houston. That means that a game like Angry Birds could now remember what level you were at when your Android phone ran out of power and you switched to your iPad.

"Helpouts are face-to-face video calls powered by Google+ Hangouts. You can start and join a video call from your computer, Android, iPhone, and iPad devices. The Helpouts platform is different from Hangouts because Helpouts takes care of all of the setup and maintenance associated with delivering your services - from payment, to scheduling, reputation management, and customer acquisition."

"Twitter with its short and snappy messaging is very dependent on mobile usage and smart phones. The rise of the visual web is making Pinterest and Tumblr the fastest growing social networks on the planet. Google+ is no longer an afterthought and is embedded in Google's web assets including Gmail, local checkins and the mobile Android ecosystems."