5 Best Ad Blocker Browsers for Android
1. Brave Browser – Built-in ad blocker
2. Firefox – Adblock with extension
3. Samsung Internet – Ad blocker with extension
4. Microsoft Edge – Chrome by Microsoft
5. Kiwi Browser – Chrome on steroids
5 Best Websites for Kids
Looking for great websites for kids? Our editors have made it easy with these hand-picked lists of fun, age-appropriate kid friendly websites. You can also read our age-appropriate website reviews for kids and parents written by our experts. It's a big world on the web, but with lists like ours, it can be a worthwhile one for your kids.
Learning should be fun for kids. Here are the best websites for kids that help them learn maths, science, social studies, and more!
1. Starfall
Starfall is an excellent website that helps younger kids develop math, early literacy, and problem-solving skills through fun learning games, stories, and printables. The site is designed so parents can sit and explore with their child, or to allow kids to navigate themselves.
The website was founded nearly 20 years ago to provide free and low-cost educational experiences for young children. Since its inception, this site has become a go-to resource for thousands of teachers and parents. It is known both for its colourful graphics, fun songs and characters and interactive learning games and its comprehensive early reading and math curricula. Starfall offers an excellent phonics-based programme which grows with your child’s confidence and ability. Most of the online resources are free but though a low-cost annual subscription all family members (including grandparents) will be able to access the full extent of the activities and printable resoures.
Visit Starfall
2. Scholastic
Scholastic created the Scholastic Learn at Home website to provide students with an array of learning journeys that span various content areas. Subscriptions include several learning opportunities per day, including projects based on articles and stories, virtual field trips, reading and geography challenges, and more.
3. Funbrain
Funbrain has hundreds of interactive games designed to educate and entertain kids. Some popular books and comics, such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Brewster Rockit, are available as free reads on Funbrain.
Bright colors, funny graphics and games, and a safe online environment make FunBrain the perfect kid friendly website for kids.
Visit Funbrain
4. PBS Kids
PBS Kids is one of the few educational websites for kids which covers a wide range of subjects. PBS Kids provides kids and their parents with a wealth of free early learning games, activities and videos from some of their favourite PBS TV shows
The website is easy to use for young children and it is colourful, fun and appealing. A simple sign up provides your child with a profile page from which they can create an avatar and view any saved content. Games are categorized by topics (such as shapes, problem solving or feelings) and the quality audio provided means children can enjoy the experience by themselves. All games have a cartoon character to appeal to children.
Visit PBS Kids
5. ABCMouse.com
ABCmouse.com website is full of online early-learning curriculum for ages 2-7 that offers age-appropriate content in an engaging format.
The content focuses on reading, writing, math, art and music and songs, social studies, and science and health. Content is presented through art, books, songs, puzzles, games, and printables. Kids follow a learning path that gets progressively more challenging as they use the site. Their level is set based on starting age, and they can either follow a customized learning path or choose activities at random. Kids are motivated by ABC Mouse’s tickets and reward system.
Visit ABCMouse
5 Websites for Music Lovers
1. Bandcamp
Bandcamp is a favorite among independent musicians, and it's easy to see why: the platform is user-friendly, artist-first, and does a great job of encouraging music discovery among fans. Bandcamp has millions of users worldwide, including hundreds of thousands of artists and more than 3,000 labels.
If you have your music on Bandcamp and a website with Bandzoogle, you can take advantage of the easy integration. In just a couple of clicks, you can add your Bandcamp music anywhere on your website, eliminating the need to re-upload tracks or use separate apps or plugins. The Bandcamp music player will automatically adjust to match your website's theme. It looks beautiful on mobile, too!
2. Hype Machine
Hype Machine is sort of a conglomeration of Pandora and last.fm. It aggregates music from mp3 blogs and posts them on the front page, where users can "love" songs and create lists out of those tunes. You can search under different genres or look for the "freshest" music, album premieres and most popular artists. Looking at the most popular tracks is a great way to find new music, and each song links to different ways to purchase the music and various ways to share the song on social media.
3. Soundcloud
Soundcloud started off as a way for musicians to share recordings but eventually spread out to be so much more, now utilizing technology that allows musicians to collaborate, promote and share their music as well as allowing listeners to find new music to listen to. The most unique thing about Soundcloud is the way it displays the songs in waveform, allowing the user to listen to certain pieces or even stop and comment on specific points of a track (timed comments). Recognized more as a distribution tool than a listening tool, Soundcloud still does both magnificently.
4. Daytrotter
They call themselves "The source for new music from emerging bands" but there's so much from established bands here as well. Daytrotter records live sessions with musicians (recently: Mumford and Sons, The Lumineers) and makes them available for you to watch/listen to (you need to be a member to watch videos). You can queue up music in the Daytrotter player on the bottom of your page while you listen to varied playlists from readers as well as artists.
5. Audiomack
Audiomack isn't as widely known as some of the other platforms on this list, but it definitely deserves to be on your radar. You can host all of your music for free - no premium accounts, and no upload or storage limits. You'll also have free access to content sharing tools and an artist dashboard loaded with advanced stats and engagement data.
Even more exciting is that thousands of musicians are currently benefiting from Audiomack's beta monetization program, which offers a competitive per-stream rate for uploaded tracks. They're working to roll out the program to all Audiomack creators by 2021.
5 Best Free Video Editing Software
(The list is in alphabetical order)
Hitfilm Express
Hitfilm Express is the best free video editing software, as its high-energy style appeals to budding filmmakers who want to put a special touch on a personal event or get creative with a video blog, but it's still easy enough for the adventurous friends-and-family crowd.
iMovie
iMovie's drag and drop interface makes it quick to move and edit video elements. Mac users can use this editing software as a playground for learning the basics of video editing.
Lightworks
Lightworks is another great free video editing software, available on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Lightworks is one of the more powerful video editors on the list. It's packed with tons of useful features. The free version should be more than enough for most users.
Openshot
Openshot is entirely open source, which makes it one of the best video editing software that is accessible.
It may remind some Mac users a little of iMovie with its easy to use drag and drop interface. However, Openshot packs more features than iMovie, including unlimited layers and audio mixing.
Good old iMovie comes baked into Mac OS. Like most native Mac apps, this video editor is very intuitive to use.
Shotcut
Shotcut is one of the best free video editing software for Windows, and it also works great on Mac and Linux PCs .
Shotcut, like Blender, is a fully open source program, so you get access to all the features without the need for a paid upgrade.
5 Most Useful Apps (Android)
(The list is in alphabetical order)
1. Applock
You probably have apps that you'd rather others didn't see. No judgment here. But if you've passed your phone to someone else to look at photos, how do you stop them seeing your email - or setting a new high score on Threes?
2. CamScanner
Several apps let you use your phone's camera to digitize paper documents, but few are as slick and powerful as CamScanner. It can crop and enhance images in seconds, leaving you with a digital document that's aligned and easy to read-even if your phone's camera isn't the best. You can join documents together, add your own annotations on top, and then share the result as a PDF or JPG.
3. Google Drive suite
Google Drive and its suite of apps are the most popular productivity apps on Android. The full collection includes Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Keep, and Google Photos. Between these apps, you have a full-fledged office suite complete with a note taking app, cloud storage, and a place to back up all of your photos and videos for free. Google Drive comes with 15GB of storage for free. You can increase the cloud storage space with a monthly subscription. The whole package are some of the most useful apps we've seen.
4. Greenify
Getting the most from your phone's battery is always key. Android 10 may have its own set of battery-saving tools, and many phones now offer power-saving modes, but these should be seen as a last resort.
Greenify sits in the background helping to regulate how much battery various apps are using. It freezes the apps you tell it to when you're not using them and instantly defrosts them when you need to gain access.
5. LastPass
LastPass is a password manager app. There are many of these in Google Play and most of them work fairly well. However, we like LastPass because it stays current with Android updates and also has a second authenticator app for additional security. The app generates passwords, saves your passwords to various sites, and helps you login quickly when you need to. It adds a layer of security to your life. The subscription costs are also quite reasonable. There are other really good password manager apps as well. However, we like that LastPass is always among the first to integrate new Android features quickly so it gets the spot for now.