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The 5 Mobile Computing Stories You've (Probably) Missed This Week

It was a huge week for mobile computing – Amazon, Google and Samsung were among the week’s hottest app releases and product/platform launches.

Here’s rollApp’s top five news stories of the week (June 23-27, 2014). Of course, we didn’t include anything the FIFA World Cup-related but, hey, you can always follow Alexi Lalas on Twitter @AlexiLalas.

Without further ado, let’s go.

1. All dates are finally set. rollApp will be launching 50+ applications at Tizen Samsung Z Unpacked Event in Moscow, Russia on July 10, 2014.


From the hands-on with Samsung Z by Ashiq Nazir: “We do not have any lag with the user interface that many android users seem to detest with hardware manufacturers own custom user interface skins that run on top of vanilla android, another reason to come over to Tizen.”

2. Android’s upcoming L release reveals its ‘L Developer Preview’, an early glimpse at the next version of Android. During its I/O keynote, Google showcased “a detailed approach to typography and spacing” and created new design guidelines.


Everything Google announced at Google I/O 2014 in one handy list.

3. Google Play for Education comes to Chromebooks:


“Google Play for Education started with tablets, but teachers told us they wanted to use it to find apps, books, and videos for Chromebooks too. So today we’re expanding Google Play for Education to US K-12 Chromebook schools.” said Pratip Banerji, Product Manager. “Share Chrome apps instantly, with the whole class or with individual students. Soon we’re adding brand new apps from partners.”

4. Amazon released a new device - the Fire Phone: “The new phone’s sexiest feature is Firefly. At a push of a button on the side of the phone, the back camera recognizes products in the real world, with bar codes and other product information, then displays ways to buy the product on Amazon.”


“The biggest challenge of modern UI design is knowing when to stop. The current leaders in mobile computing have already learned this through hard-won experience. Amazon will figure it out eventually too, if it doesn’t charm its users to death first.” ~ Amazon’s Fire Phone May Be Too Magical for Its Own Good.

5. Upcoming Linux Foundation and Tizen events announced:

The Tizen Developer Summit in Seoul, Korea November 11-12 and Shanghai, China October 27 - 29, 2014.

Join Tizen

If your favourite mobile computing news isn’t here or there’s anything else that you think would be good to be included, let us know in the comments or on Twitter (@rollApp).

How rollApp Delivers Popular Desktop Apps on Tizen, Samsung's 'OS of Everything'

On June 2-4, 2014 team rollApp, including our CTO Dima Malenko, visited the Tizen Developer Conference in San Francisco where we met awesome community of developers and #TDCSF14 hosts, took pictures with the new Samsung Z smartphone and a prototype Tizen TV (see below), but, most importantly, shared our experience about porting 50+ desktop apps to Tizen. The list included all sorts of apps from text editors, spreadsheets and other productivity tools to games, graphics, and educational apps.

What’s Tizen, anyway? 

Tizen is a Linux-based open-source operating system developed by Samsung. It’s designed not only for smartphones – where it’s going to become a real alternative to Android – but it also comes in multiple profiles to serve different industry requirements. The current Tizen profiles are Tizen IVI (in-vehicle infotainment), Tizen Mobile, Tizen TV, and Tizen Wearable. The Tizen project resides within the Linux Foundation and is governed by a Technical Steering Group.


Samsung’s first Tizen OS phone, the Samsung Z, will only be available in Russia in Q3 and, rumored, the launches in other countries would follow. Tizen phone users will be able to find and install rollApp applications through Tizen Store (also to be launched soon).

rollApp Presentation: What We Learned From Porting 50+ Cloud Apps to Tizen
We’ve discovered a lot about Tizen, which broadened our vision on developing cross-platform cloud applications. In this presentation we’re sharing some of the lessons we’ve learned in the following areas:
  • Maintaining cross-platform compatibility, while taking the most out of each supported device and OS; conforming to platform guidelines and dealing with the certification process; 
  • Optimizing user experience for the Tizen; 
  • Performance optimization; 
  • Dealing with Web standards and features beyond the scope of the standards.
Here are the slides of the talk on SlideShare and we hope to be able to post soon a link to a video of the presentation.



Visited Tizen Developer Conference 2014? Find and tag yourself in our photo album on Facebook or just give us a like! 


Post by rollApp.

How to Open ePub Files in Chrome, Firefox and Dropbox

EPUB, short for electronic publication, is a free and open ebook standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). EPUB became an official standard of the IDPF in 2007, superseding the Open eBook standard. Files have the .epub extension.

rollApp File Opener, a handy browser extension, allows you to read ePub books and files right in your browser, no fuss, easy and to the point. Using the File Opener, you can also open ePub files in your web-based Dropbox account (by default Dropbox does not read the .epub extension, you can only download or share it):


It’s all possible without installing a separate, resource-hogging software. All you have to do is get rollApp File Opener for either Chrome or Firefox.


Open .epub files on the Web


Once the extension is installed, you need to configure your browser for allowing pop-ups from www.rollApp.com in Chrome or Firefox. 

Now you can open and view ePub files on the web, in Google search results – just move the cursor to a file, you’ll see the rollApp’s pop-up icon, click Open. Alternatively, use the context menu – simply right-click the file link you want to open and select Open with rollApp.


Important: to enable rollApp File Opener, the epub file(s) must be located on a web page. It often occurs that there are just links to links to located-somewhere-else ePub files and so some users think rollApp File Opener cannot do the job as promised. It definitely can – just make sure a file you need exists on a given page. By the way, in Google Chrome you’ll see the found files in the extension menu icon: 


View .epub files in Dropbox


Once you’ve installed rollApp File Opener, login to rollApp.com, connect your Dropbox account, and you’re all set – your ePub files are now ready to read in your favorite cloud storage.


rollApp uses FBReader, a ebook reader which also supports popular ebook formats including fb2, mobi, rtf, html, and plain text. 

The app allows you to choose colors, fonts, page turning animations, bookmarks just to make reading as convenient as you want. Other FBReader features include text search, full-screen mode, list of recent books, footnotes and hyperlinks support.

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How to Print a Document on rollApp's Cloud

We often hear from our users that being able to print documents is exactly what they have been looking for in our cloud-based office suites. Here are the most frequent requests from our community:

  • How do I add my printer so that I can print?
  • Is there anyway you could add cloud print as a feature to rollApp?
  • I’m trying to print the doc from my wifi printer but without success
  • I need help printing my Google document
On rollApp, you cannot print right from an open app using the File > Print menu. To print a document, follow these steps:
  1. Make sure you’ve connected Google Drive to your rollApp account. 
  2. From OpenOffice Writer on rollApp (or any other app), save a file to Google Drive: File > Save/As. If needed, export your file to PDF (File > Export to PDF). 
  3. In Google Drive, click the file and then hit the Print icon in the bottom left corner of the interface window. The “Print preview” will appear and print settings will open.
  4. In the upper right corner, click the Print button.
If you have any questions, please let us know. 

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@rollApp

Introducing rollApp Toolbar – Get Shortcuts to Important Features

We at rollApp have received numerous requests from our community about creating SOMETHING that would allow accessing the most used rollApp’s functions right in the application window. Now we’re really excited to share what’s sure to be the next popular time-saver while using rollApp on your computer, laptop or iPad: rollApp Toolbar.

The rollApp Toolbar appears near to the application menu once your app is launched:

Enabling the toolbar is super easy

Click the toolbar icon – it stays visible as long as you use it:

The following features are available from the toolbar:
  • Drag to Reposition: for your convenience, move the toolbar to any part of the application widow – next time you open the app, it’ll stay there.
  • Clipboard Manager: use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to copy and paste content from and into the app.
  • Setup Cloud Storage: go to your rollApp profile and connect Google Drive, Dropbox, or Box accounts. Once connected, you’ll be able to open, save and edit files using any app available in the App Collection.
  • Profile Settings: configure your rollApp account settings.
  • Go Ad-Free: don’t like seeing ads? Subscribe to an individual app or buy monthly subscription to 80+ cloud apps just for $6.99/mo.
If on iPad, triple-tap to enable the toolbar:

If you have any questions, suggestions or ideas, please let us know.

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