1. Capture your signature in Preview. In Lion “Preview” has the ability to capture your signature using your iSight camera. Simply write your signature with black ink on a white piece of paper, then go to Preview/Preferences and click on Signature. Hold your signature up to the camera and it will save the image so you can easily sign PDFs electronically.

2. Change your iCal and Address Book skin. The updates to Address Book and iCal take a realistic approach that some people don’t seem to be particularly fond of. If you aren’t a fan of the new leather skins, Codeus over at Macnix created a clean aluminum skin for both applications that you can download and install yourself, following his simple installation instructions.

3. Three finger/double tap dictionary look up. Snow Leopard already had the ability to look up a word in the dictionary by highlighting the text and pressing Command + Control + D, which was a useful feature but difficult to remember. In Lion you can now double tap on a word with three fingers to look up the word in the built-in dictionary as well as Wikipedia. You can find this feature in System Preferences/Trackpad.

4. Hold down a key to bring up accented characters. Ever wonder how to type a ñ or è quickly without having to open up the character map? Accessing accented characters in OS X Lion is a breeze. Just hold down the letter and a dialog box will appear that lists all alternative and accented characters.

5. Hold Shift when launching Launchpad. This little trick is an oldie but a goodie. Hold down the Shift key and click on Launchpad from your dock. The apps will slowly fade in from the background. This trick shows off the OS X aqua effects and also works when minimizing windows. Although it may not be the most useful feature, it’s a fun way to open up Launchpad.

By Vivian Kim.

iOS App Discovery With hundreds of thousands of apps available through Apple’s App Store, finding the best measurement convertor can be a daunting task. AppShopper helps by not only providing recommendations, but also showing update history, reviews, and even price changes. AppShopper also has an iOS app along with RSS feeds so you never miss a chance to discover the next great app.

Android App DiscoveryBecause of the “open” nature of the Android platform, there are quite a few more resources that allow for more robust discovery on Android. AppAware is an application that allows users to find new apps by tracking installs, updates, and removals. AppAware goes a step further by adding location into the mix. This provides great exposure for local apps who thrive based on usage in a specific area rather than around the globe.

Chrome Web App Discovery Playing off the fact that there really is an app for almost everything, the Google Chrome extension – aptly named There’s a web app for that – provides users with app suggestions based on their browsing history. No need to randomly guess if there is a an app that could replace your web browsing. Now just browse normally and this extension will search for you.

If none of these work for you, or if you are looking for a more curated way to discover apps, the be sure to check out Unplggd’s Weekly App Recommendations, where we cover everything from mobile, to desktop, to web apps.

By Jesse Leikin

It makes calls! Just kidding. Well, half kidding. The phone is probably the least-used app on our home screen. But there’s a whole other mess of cool productivity tricks that Apple’s developers have built into the iPhone. For a roundup of the more common keyboard shortcuts and scrolling tricks, like how to take a picture of the screen or drop a pin in maps, check out Apple’s iPhone Tips page.

But the tricks go ever deeper. Here are a few advanced user tips we’ve found around the web. Did you know your iPhone could…

Turn Itself Off with a Sleep Timer?
Click through the Clock App and into the Timer tab. Set the timer for how long you want your iPhone to stay awake, then select “Sleep iPod” under “When Timer Ends.” It’ll shut off any open music or video apps, including Pandora.

Make International Calls Easy?
Instead of dialing the country exit code before each international call (That’s “011″ for everyone in the U.S. and Canada), just dial “+.” It’ll automatically pop up when you hold down the zero (“0″) key. So to call England, you’d dial +44 before the local area code and phone number.

Become a Scientific Calculator?
While inside the Calculator App, tilt your iPhone to landscape mode. You’ll be presented with a functional scientific calculator, featuring buttons for squares and square roots; sin, cos and tan; and factorials.

Easily Zoom Out on Maps?
You know you can use one finger to double-tap and zoom in on a map in the Maps App. But if you need to zoom back out, you can do it easily by tapping the screen with two fingers at once. It’s way easier than the pinch zoom method if you’re holding the phone in one hand or reaching across the car dashboard.

Set Custom Volume Profiles?
If you’re sharing your iPhone with, say, a teenaged fan of loud music, you can set custom volume profiles by switching out headphones. The headphone jack on your iPhone registers each individual set of headphones you plug in. The volume you set for each set of headphones will stay consistent each time you plug them in.

By Taryn Fiol

IrfanView: Great for beginners and experienced users, IrfanView is a freeware graphic viewer that has many unique and interesting features. This application supports a plethora of file types including Adobe Photoshop filters. For the incredible price of free, it’s hard to find a better option for the last majority of your photo needs (pictured above).

VirtuaWin: The vast majority of us no longer work in one application at a time. All too often we find ourselves switching between a few browser windows, an email client, photo editing software, and maybe even word processing documents. If this is the case using VirtuaWin to create virtual desktops is a great solution. Similar to Spaces on Mac, VirtuaWin gives you up to 9 virtual desktops to help reduce clutter on your screen.

Fences: On your PC the desktop tends to get cluttered rather quickly. While some go out of there way to keep their desktops clear, for most this isn’t practical. Instead of trying to remove everything from the desktop, use Fences to keep everything organized. Fences helps you create logical groups of the different icons floating around your desktop.

Force Empty Trash: If you use your computer long enough, you will inevitably run into the problem where you can’t empty your trash because a file is supposedly in use. If you have seen this then you know the frustration that it brings. Fortunately there a nifty little program called Force Empty Trash that overrides your system to empty the trash. Just make sure you know what is in there and that you are not trying to delete important system files.

Alfred: An incredibly useful productivity tool, Alfred allows for you to navigate and search your Mac as well as web apps within seconds. Alfred also allows for quick keyboard shortcuts to increase the speed at which you can navigate your machine. A great replacement for Quicksilver and Spotlight, Alfred is one of the best productivity tools available for Mac.

Laundry: Desktop backgrounds help set your computer apart and give it a unique style. Unfortunately, no matter how awesome your background image, after a while it becomes old and boring. Instead of letting this happen, liven up your desktop by using Laundry to rotate your desktop background in predetermined intervals. Laundry is able to pull from RSS feeds or even from Flickr to keep your desktop images lively and exciting.

Last Friday, developers were able to get their hands on the latest developer build of Apple’s upcoming operating system 10.7, aka OS X Lion. Along with updated features came some new desktop wallpapers. Apple has always been known for their beautiful and epic wallpapers. This bunch are nature-themed, featuring animals and scenic landscapes.

What’s interesting about these wallpapers is the actual size of them. At 3200 x 2000, these are larger than any display Apple currently ships today (the highest being the 27” iMac, topping out at 2560 x 1440). It’s nice to get such high quality wallpapers that are sure to be large enough to fit any screen you have, as well as span beautifully across two displays. ItsAllTech.com put together a bundle of these high quality wallpapers, which you can download here for free.

By Vivian Kim

[via cultofmac.com]

[via Reddit]

I also really want Apple TV. Unlike the iPad I can see exactly how I’d use it!

Aside from the slick touch UI, we’re definitely loving the ability to hook the tablet itself up and project it onto an HDTV via a dock. It was one of my #1 requests for the iPad, but I guess we’re just going to have to wait a little bit longer for Apple to catch up with the needs of consumers.

If teasers are your thing, be sure to check out the 30 second HP Slate trailer. If the quick editing and cinematic orchestra doesn’t sell it for you, the features might certainly will.
Let us know what you think! Does HP have a solid winner on their hands?

[Via Engadget]

By Anthony.”