Rovio Mobile have released updated levels to the Angry Birds Seasons series for Chinese New Year. Year of the Dragon has a whole new set of levels and fun all designed around the Chinese New Year. The new features include the ability to use the Mighty Eagle (Mighty Dragon) for help clearing those hard-to-beat levels. Like all the previous ABS updates, this one offers a new set of colors, graphics, items, and more, all centered around the common theme.

Fireworks popping, lanterns glowing, red envelopes bursting with money – it’s Chinese New Year! This holiday is China’s biggest and longest festival, a time for feasting with family and friends, setting off fireworks, and having fun. The Angry Birds are celebrating the start of the Year of the Dragon, but the piggies are trying to scare them away from their eggs! Luckily the Angry Birds have some help – the Mighty Eagle has transformed into the fearsome Mighty Dragon!

Download Angry Birds Seasons now.

Our new app Freeze Frame is now available for FREE on the Android Market. Its often better to use video to capture action shots when the camera can be too slow. Freeze Frame is a simple to use frame grabber that allows you to capture the best action shots from video and save them to image format. Simply select a video, seek through the video to the chosen frame and click capture. Great for capturing those opportune moments with kids and pets where the click of a button is often too slow…

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My Taptu is a clever social news feed reader that allows you to discover topics and sources from our StreamStore or add any RSS feed from the web. Information can be pulled from a broad range of sources, and is presented in a clear and easily navigable format. Taptu’s StreamStore keeps tabs on 13,000 feeds, each easily available from its Featured section. It also hosts an impressive range of bespoke aggregated feeds arranged by topic. If you can’t find what you what from a Taptu-recognised stream, you can search for other RSS feeds using Bing. There is also an option to merge feeds into one stream.

Features:

• Discover curated streams in the StreamStore
• Search Bing for RSS feeds
• Import your favorite RSS feeds from Google Reader
• Widget for your home screen: supports multiple widgets
• Add your own Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn account
• very fast, even on slow 2G networks

Viewing and interacting with streams:

• Share with friends: Share stories with your friends
• See full articles that friends share via Twitter and Facebook: My
  Taptu will convert links your friends share into a full article view
• Like and comment from your Facebook stream: Seen something a friend
  has sent that you want to Like or Comment on? Do it right inside the app.

See also: Seesmic, TweetCaster, my6sense

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The Amazon App Store at www.amazon.com/appstore is now live for those located in the US. International users will be waiting a little longer. Expect to find around 4,000 apps from big developers such as Gameloft, Glu mobile and Rio. The Amazon App Store can be used via your Android phone or web browser. The web version comes with a nifty test drive feature which allows users to demo apps for 30 minutes. Early adopters will be welcomed today with a free copy of Angry Birds Rio which is exclusive to the Amazon App Store. Amazon is aiming to offer one paid app for free each day.

Hopefully Amazon can provide a quality app store by going further than Google to review every app before they go on sale. The Google app store has been plauged by poor quality, duplicate and spam applications making it arduous to search effectively.

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Fat Booth

Tired of diets?! Get fat instantly with FatBooth for Android.
What would you look like with a “few” extra pounds? And what about your friends?
Find out with FatBooth for Android, a fun way to instantly supersize faces on your Android device.
Use FatBooth for Android on family, friends or colleagues photos and share them via email, FaceBook, Twitter.

Features:
• Works with photos taken with your Android device camera or from your photo gallery
• Auto-cropping using face detection
• Transformation process is instant with no internet connection needed
• Shake device to see before and after views
• Scroll results into the app gallery
• Save results to your photo gallery
• Share with your friends via email, FaceBook or Twitter

See also: AgingBooth, BaldBooth, FaceGoo.

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Android Assistant

This tool software can help you to kill process, free memory, speed up the phones running speed, save power, to help your phone more efficient, stable work.

Functions:
• Monitoring status(cpu, memory, battery)
• Process Manager(#Can distinguish different types of processes, to avoid manslaughter, #Quick Boost and Auto Boost can be intelligent to kill useless process, Ignore list to filter apps)
• Startup Manager(kill useless apps in the startup, to free memory, speed up the phones running speed, save power)
• Startup time(Can analyze system loading time and third-party apps loading time)
• Startup Silent(mute on startup and shutdown, so as not to disturb others)
• Batch Uninstall(easy to uninstall the apps)
• Volume Control(easy to set different types of volume)
• Ringer(easy to set the Ringer mode)
• Battery use(View the application’s battery use, Easy to find large power apps)
• Save Battery Settings(Turn off bluetooth, wifi, gps, auto-sync, orientation, haptic feedback, brightness, outtime to save power)
• Cache Cleaner(easy to remove cache files)
• File Manager(browse SDCard, rename, delete, cut, details, search, new file, new folder,view files)

See also: Android Optimizer, Android Booster, battery Improve.

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Stupid Zombies

Those stupid zombies are back, and you are humanity’s last hope to keep them brainless. But beware, ammo is limited so you will have to get crafty and use the straight bullets, grenades, split- and buckshots in the most effective way possible to survive the 300 levels.
One man, one shotgun and lots of stupid zombies.
Now with OpenFeint leaderboards!

See also: Ghosts’n Zombies, Meteor Breakout Lite, Crazy Bricks.

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The classic toy Mr Potato comes to Android. Even if you never had a Mr Potato growing up you will probably be aware of it or seen the character in the popular Toy Story series from Pixar.
The toy originated back in 1952 and used a real potato! Thankfully our version uses your Android device so you don’t need to go to the supermarket first.

Our Potato Pal allows potato parts such as eyes, nose and arms to be moved around, rotated and resized. Parts can also be hidden or multiple parts added. Backgrounds can also be changed. Once done editing a potato it can be saved to keep or for later editing. The currently displayed potato can be saved to the SD card as a screen shot, set as a contact icon or as a wallpaper on your device. The potato can also be opened with other image applications already installed on your device. It is a very effective application for creating Avatars for your contacts or for export to other applications such as Twitter or Facebook.

The toy has gained cult status over the years with dozens of themed variations. We have covered the Toy Story version for now. If there is a theme you would like to see please emails us apps@androidbrains.com and we’ll consider developing it in the future.

Our current Potato Pal series is shown below all of which can be installed via the Google Android Market. Here is the longer promotion video showing all the features of the Toy Story Version:

Mr Potato – Toy Story

Screenshots showing the default potato before editing and an edited potato.

This version features the Toy Story character. All the boxed parts are included: black glasses, red nose, tounge, round eyes and back moustaches. A set of Toy Story backgrounds are also included.

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Mr Potato – Spud Lightyear Toy Story

Screenshots showing the default potato before editing and an edited potato.

This version features the Toy Story Buzz Lightyear character. All the original version parts are included as shown and listed above. The Toy Story backgrounds and outer space backgrounds are included.

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Mr Potato – Original

Screenshots showing edited potatoes, unlocking the body allows it to be rotated.

This is the original Mr Potato for die hard fans. All the boxed parts are included: yellow glasses, tounge and brown moustache.

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Mr Potato – Original Demo Version

We have also released a demo version if you would like to test the application first. The demo version allows parts to be edited but excludes save and send functionality that the full versions have.

Google Creative Lab have created a neat little app called Androidify that lets you create your own Android like avatars. Androids can be customized with their own physique, hair, clothing, and accessories. Your creations can then be shared and saved. Heres a video below to show more:

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The Woomba’s are on the loose.

No you don’t have to run home and take your meds, this time you really are seeing things that aren’t there. Augmented Reality (AR) has begun to influence the course of the information age by fusing real and virtual worlds. What information is overlaid can appear in many different context. Some examples are directions and points of interest to virtual graffiti and characters.

Junaio Demonstration in Amsterdam.

The combination of sensors on modern smart phones have made the fusion of real and virtual worlds possible. The device GPS, compass, tilt sensor and camera are used to provide location information. A database of points of interest for a particular layer can then searched and information overlaid over the current display.

Wikitude, Layar, and Junaio are the most popular browsers designed specifically for AR. Currently Layar offers the largest selection of content with over 1,500 layers. Social networks have also become a source of information for AR thanks to geotagging. Tips, photos and video can be attached to a point of interest.

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The Android platform has seen rapid adoption to several mobile devices since its release. This growth looks set to continue as the platform spreads further across handset, tablet and other home media devices. Android’s popularity has been driven by the large number of apps available and the simplicity for developers to publish their own apps. Sadly it wasn’t long before Android was exploited for ill or criminal intent.

The power of the average smart phone today roughly rivals a desktop PC a decade ago. As with the PC the increased complexity has opened up more vulnerabilities to attack. According to Kaspersky the first Trojan for Android appeared in August 2010. The Trojan SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer comes disguised as a media player app. Secretly in the background it sends text messages to various destinations the users expense and the criminals profit.

Malicious apps for Android can be classed under malware, spyware, phishing, virus and adware. The number of malicious apps directed at Android now seems to be growing. As an indicator the twitter feed below showing recent tweets globally on #android #virus which gives an idea of the scale of the problem.

Several security solutions are now available for Android by a few of the major distributors for the PC as well as smaller scale developers. These are available as free and paid applications. Currently one of the most popular security apps is free Lookout Mobile Security which offers anti-virus monitoring of all software with scan options, as well as phone location monitoring an backup. SmrtGuard Security provides similar features. Major distributor AVG also offer a free and paid security solution which protects against virus and malware in real time. The paid version uses cloud computing to save your phone resources. McAfee offer WaveSecure but this only provides backup and restore functionality. As yet Norton Security have only provided a Beta application but will offer anti-virus protection.

These security solutions run as background applications and have the side effect of consuming CPU and memory resources. On low end phones this can be unacceptable warranting removal of the app. A solution is to find a security app that can be run on demand or periodically, or try to avoid sources of infection. So what can you do to avoid viruses and other malware. An simple start is only to install software from official app stores which can be regulated. However, policing these stores can be a slow process. Sound advice is to check the app rating and read the comments. Before installation check the apps access permissions, do they seem fair for what the application does.

City Jump for Android

Joseph Hanlon writing for Cnet has published his top 100 android apps as of Dec 2010. We picked our top ten out of that list should you be pushed for time. In no particular order:

Kindle for Android — free
If you want access to the growing Amazon ebook library, the Kindle app for Android will open that door for you.

Phonebook 2.0 — free
A phone book replacement with a very pretty look and feel.

WoW Droid Armory — free
Have you worked hard for your level 70 Warlock and want to show him off? Then look no further than WoW Droid Armory.

LauncherPro — free
Tired of your home screen? Try LauncherPro for a completely new look and feel across all of your home screens.

TweetDeck — free
You could download Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and Foursquare separately, or you could do them all in TweetDeck instead.

IMDb Movies & TV — free
What’s the name of that guy, with the hair, in the movie, with that other guy? IMDb knows.

AppAware – Find Hot Apps — free
Follow app trends to discover the next big game or productivity tool.

Epicurious Recipe App — free
Loads of yummy recipes at your fingertips.

Alchemy — free
A fun game of combining elements to create incresingly complex objects and concepts.

City Jump — free
Doodle Jump plus superheroes equals a lot of fun.

Source.