10 Free iPhone Apps for a More Romantic Valentine’s Day

February 14, love it or hate it, is just around the corner. Valentine’s Day is yet another holiday that has been over-marketed and over-commercialized, judging by the onslaught of pink hearts and red roses, but if you have someone in your life to profess your love to, you won’t mind a little visit from Cupid this year.

If you’re planning a special night, the following 10 free apps can help you take your romance game to the next level. And even if you aren’t presently in a relationship, Valentine’s Day is good excuse to tell someone that they’re special. C’mon, you can break out the warm fuzzies, at least for one day.

View As Slideshow » As you get ready for your Valentine’s Day festivities, you can set the mood with some romantic music. Valentine RADIO is a compilation of 20+ radio stations from around the country and streams the music directly to your phone so you can get your Luther Vandross, Barry White and slow jam fix.If you want to demonstrate your love in more visual ways, you can send a custom-made Valentine’s Day photo that you personally designed. The Valentine Photo Free app lets you personalize photos with cutesy images like hearts, swirly designs and presents. You can e-mail your creation to the lucky recipient or post it on a social network to publicly declare your love.Be Mine Lite is another Valentine’s Day card-making app, but rather than decorate photos, this one lets you choose from a number of templates to create you custom card. You can add a whole slew of visual effects –- like hearts, whimsical swirls, flowers –- and declare your love. There is also a paid version for $0.99 that offers a wider variety of backgrounds and effects.If you’re more of a traditionalist and prefer to go the rose route, California Blooms is a great app for ordering that beautiful bouquet on the go. The app features gorgeous photos of the variety of bouquets they sell, as well as information on the care and handling of roses, and California Blooms’ eco-friendly growing process. The company is so confident in the quality of its roses that it guarantees your satisfaction or your money back.No Valentine’s Day is complete without those little, all-too-familiar candy conversation hearts. With this app, you can add anyone’s name to the “I ?” message and send the image to the lucky recipient. If you’d like to pay for the full version ($0.99), you can create your own entire message and have more options for background designs and colors.You know the expression “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Well another to consider is “The way to a woman’s heart is by cooking her dinner.” Yes, it’s that simple. The Cook’s Illustrated app tries to make it even easier. Featuring 50 of the magazine’s best recipes (and complementary videos for each), this app will provide you with the perfect meal for a romantic evening.If you really want to impress your special someone, how about whipping out “I love you” in a different language? This app provides simple translations of these three special words in a large variety of languages. So if you want to learn to say it in Indonesian (Saya cinta padamu) or Ukrainian (Ya tebe kahayu), or a host of other languages, now you can.Gather your daily horoscope and your forecast for love with this app. It shows you a three-day range (yesterday, today and tomorrow), provides lucky numbers and also offers a view of how likely you are to achieve success in attributes like wellness, creativity, money, work and more.As you’re professing your deepest feelings, you can mix in profound quotes with the help of the Love? app: A compilation of beautiful sayings about the magic of love. Quotes include: “Within you I lose myself. Without you I find myself wanting to become lost again.” What a way to sweep someone off his or her feet!Guys, you’ve wined and dined her, now, it’s time to step it up. If you’re ready for the big leagues, this is a great app to see a selection of engagement ring styles and see what’s au courant in the world of ultimate bling (just don’t look at the prices). Before you even have a chance to pop the question, she’ll be screaming "YES" as soon as she sees that little blue box.If you hate Valentine’s Day and are just bitter all around, consider downloading the Anti-Valentine’s Day Sounds app. You can commiserate with other haters and listen to the no-frills app spew things like, “Roses are red, violets are blue, you suck,” or “Valentine’s this.” It’s $0.99. (You must really hate the holiday to buy this app.)

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

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Watch Egyptian President’s Address Live on YouTube

YouTube will live stream Al Jazeera’s coverage as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak addresses the nation at 3 p.m. ET. [Update: As of 3:25 p.m., Mubarak has yet to make an appearance.] Mixed reports indicate that the president will resign.

Protests against Mubarak’s presidency have continued in Egypt during the past 17 days. The government has responded by shutting down Twitter, Facebook, and then the entire Internet. On February 1, Mubarak promised that he would not run for office again after his term expires in September, a concession that many protesters were not satisfied with.

Al Jazeera has led the world’s media in coverage throughout the protests, and it has used its obviously superior coverage to leverage a campaign to bring the news network to the United States.

For now, however, many Americans are accessing its broadcast on the Internet. YouTube has made this a bit easier by hosting a live stream of its coverage.

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The Engadget Interview: Jon Rubinstein and Steven McArthur talk webOS on PCs, 'Music Synergy,' competition, and more

We had a chance to sit down with HP's Jon Rubinstein and SVP of applications and services Steven McArthur just after the company's device-filled event yesterday, and the conversation was rather revealing. Besides being extremely upfront about some tough issues (timing, legacy support), both execs were more than willing to tackle questions about HP's current deficiencies in the consumer electronics space. We've put together a rough transcript of the chat below, and it touches on a lot of issues currently facing HP and its user base -- namely, developer support, future versions of webOS, where the company is headed with devices, and what the overarching strategy will be in the coming weeks and months. We highly suggest you take a look... after the break. Engadget: Your new CEO, Leo Apotheker, said recently in an interview with the BBC that the devices announced at this event would ship "within weeks" -- that clearly isn't the case. Can you explain?

Steven: I can't comment on that. I don't know the context. We're going to work on getting these products out as fast as we can.

Engadget: Okay, but you said summer. Early summer, late summer?

Steven: We are anxious to get a fantastic product into folks' hands as fast as possible.

Engadget: What are you doing on the developer front? [This was before the developer event]

Steven: We expect to have apps in the low tens of thousands by the launch of the Pre 3 and TouchPad. That's phase 1. We've got a massive footprint, we're committed to building the best tools for developers, and we're committed to putting in place the best marketing, and helping them drive their business programs.

Engadget: What about webOS on desktops? Is this going to be a skin on a Windows PC... or a standalone product?

Steven: We'll announce that in the next few months.

Engadget: But it's possible to create a netbook or a laptop that's pure webOS?

Steven: Architecturally it's entirely possible to have webOS have a keyboard and mouse input. Absolutely.

Engadget: On timing -- this feels a little like Palm at CES 2009. Hurry up and wait.

Jon: From a tablet perspective, we've got a home court advantage because of HP's distribution footprint.

Engadget: But how do you battle something like the iPad? Apple is basically the only show in town right now. We know the scale is here...

Jon: The marketing is going to be there. Steven is going to deliver the content, we're going to deliver the cloud services. Would I rather have it tomorrow? Of course!

Engadget: Okay, but what about the Veer? You believe in this market -- you feel there's a market for that kind of phone [Kin, Pixi -- tiny phones for tiny people]?

Jon: This is a high end device in a small package -- and if you own a WiFi tablet, why would you want a big device in your pocket? A good example is someone who travels with their TouchPad, and wants to also have a great little phone in their pocket. This can be their mobile hotspot -- so you have a big screen to work on, and the smaller one.

Engadget: On the Pre 3 -- the specs are competitive with what's on the market right now, but not really beyond that. Are you concerned about the fact that it's only competitive with what's on the market right now... people are moving on in terms of resolution, camera specs...

Jon: The reality is... we missed a product cycle last year, so we're now focused on bringing these to market, and we have a lot more in the pipeline. Whether something's got 50 more pixels on the screen...

Engadget: But there is a qualitative difference between the iPhone display and a 800 x 480 display...

Jon: Our goal was to bring a great webOS device to market. It's a workhorse, it has a very fast processor... Touch to Share. It's a great product.

Engadget: And what OS version is the TouchPad running?

Jon: It's webOS 3.0.

Engadget: What about the Pre 3?

Jon: We'll issue an OTA update at some point so it'll get 3.0.

Engadget: What about the older devices?

Jon: Not the older devices. We wanted to add lots of cool new capabilities, and frankly the older products aren't powerful enough.

Engadget: Pre 2?

Jon: Pre 2 is okay.

Engadget: So the original devices... they're not getting an update?

Jon: No. But we're going to do something special for those people.

Palm rep: We want to support our existing customer base.

Jon: We'll do something. The older devices simply don't have the horsepower.

Engadget: So getting back to developers -- are you going to be able to get the names you need? Both big houses and small?

Jon: Two years ago it was just Palm and the Pre -- even then we did pretty well on getting the apps that matter. My argument is that in the end -- yes apps matter, and we need to get a variety -- but we need to continue doing what we're doing, and that's the key apps. We don't put a Skype app on it -- it's built into the phone app. When you get your Pre 2 on Verizon, it supports Skype in the phone app. when you fire up Verizon Skype calls on your Pre 2, you don't have a separate app -- you're in the phone.

Engadget: Like the Twitter piece of the demo we saw at the event -- that wasn't a native app?

Jon: It was a plugin for Just Type. Look, we love developers, we're going to move to support them. What Todd said about "not locking up the tools in the garage" -- that's what we've been doing for the last couple of years. We're going to do a big app push, we get it, it's different now that HP could have a much broader product offering, and I think this isn't just about apps -- it's about content too. Why would you want 100,000 books when you can have Kindle and have 810,000 books? When you look at other app stores, a lot of it is just content. For all of the content providers, HP is a trusted and respected partner. When they go knock on doors, doors open. We've gotten a tremendous response.

Steven: Take Kindle for example, they've opened up APIs for us that they haven't opened for anyone else...

Jon: And it's not just because I'm on the board!

Engadget: So what is the storyline? Why should consumers choose this stuff over the competition? When they walk into a store, why are they going to leave with your product?

Jon: First of all, webOS is a better experience -- true multitasking, Synergy, Just Type, OTA updates, the list goes on and on. It's a fundamentally better experience. The whole vision of connected devices... this is just the beginning. Connected devices, web connectivity, delivering unified HP webOS experiences across a variety of devices.

Engadget: But right now, it's hard to see a point where you're in the market and competing on this stuff.

Jon: We have the home court advantage. Who's the biggest distributor of consumer electronics in the world? It's HP.

Steven: Like Best Buy -- look at someone like Best Buy. We have a very very deep relationship with Best Buy, and you'll see it in their stores.

Jon: But that's one piece of the puzzle... it's not just smartphones. It's smartphones, and tablets, and PCs, and printers, and it's a set of cloud services that HP provides.

Engadget: Speaking of the cloud stuff -- you had issues with this whole iTunes sync thing -- do you see an opportunity to get into partnerships with companies like Rdio [streaming / cloud services]?

Steven: Think about what Sonos has done in the home, integrating different services into a clean interface that allows you source the content irrespective of where it comes from. They're a little company -- think about what HP can do building that kind of client, those business relationships, and putting it on 100 million devices a year.

Engadget: So you see opportunity there? Do services like Pandora become less like an app and more like a component of something else?

Steven: What you're describing is Music Synergy.

Engadget: Does that exist?

Steven: Stay tuned.

Engadget: Okay, shifting gears -- how do you make HP into a brand that has resonance to consumers? You sell a lot of laptops, but people don't feel passionate about the HP brand like they do with Apple, Google, Microsoft...

Steven: What you're describing is an opportunity -- which is, if you look at the folks that Todd and Leo are bringing in... you have to assume that we figured that out. As we go to market against the consumer, and you think about not just leveraging the PC business, and a brand that stands for integrity and trust... if you do the brand analysis, does it have some of the softer features that an Apple has? No it doesn't. But we can invest a great deal to change that.

Jon: As soon as we have products. We have nothing to advertise now. Soon you'll see the "Everybody On" campaign.

Steven: It starts tomorrow -- watch the Grammys this weekend.

Jon: And as we start shipping these, you'll see a compelling marketing campaign around them.

Engadget: Leo said he wants the products to be cooler than Apple -- what do you think of that?

Jon: When I talk to Leo he is very supportive. He says, 'what can I do to make this happen faster'? Leo has completely embraced this. He's a software guy who understands the importance of software. He likes gadgets. He's really jazzed about all this. When he speaks inside the company, he's always hitting on how important webOS and connectivity across devices is.

Engadget: Did you have to switch to an HP laptop when you came over?

Jon: I use everything.

Engadget: Except for the iPhone.

Steven: And iPads...

Engadget: you've never used an iPad?

Jon: I've held one.

Engadget: C'mon. Really?

Jon: Look, your guys' job is to look at everyone's experience and compare them -- my job is to create new experiences, and I don't know how to do that if I'm being impacted and influenced by what other people are doing.

Engadget: I know you have an army of people who look at this stuff, but they're not you -- don't you ever want to look at these deeply and try and figure out why are people so delighted by the competition's products?

Jon: I read about it on Engadget and I see the videos. I've been doing this for a really long time. We have a UI team that looks at all these products, a competitive analysis team that looks at these products. I want a fresh look at everything we make, and I don't want it to be influenced by what anyone else is doing. So I don't use the other stuff. This didn't start off as a religious thing -- when the iPhone came out, I was getting the Centro out the door and I was testing it 24 hours a day. It got turned into a religious thing but the reality is that if I'm going to spend my time I want to spend it on our devices and on our experiences and thinking about how we make them even better.

Additional reporting by Nilay Patel

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Google Adds Extra Layer of Security to User Accounts

For those worried about the threat of being hacked — and these days, who isn’t? — Google is here to help. The company is rolling out an optional extra layer of security for all Google accounts, mostly to boost the confidence of Gmail and Google Docs users.

The two-step verification process should be familiar to just about anyone who’s signed up for an online banking account. The first step is a regular password; the second step involves a code number sent to your mobile phone. You get the code via text message or an automated call, then enter it on the website. And if that’s too much of a hassle, there’s also an app — called Google Authenticator — for iPhone, Android or BlackBerry that will generate a code for you.

This isn’t a new technology for Google. Two-step verification has been offered to enterprise users since September, when it was implemented in Google Apps. For Google account holders, it’s opt-in. And no, you don’t have to go through the mobile verification part every time you want to check your Gmail. The two steps only kick in when you’re logging into your Google account on a new web browser, through a new application or on a new mobile device.

As Google points out, it is devilishly easy for a hacker to access large chunks of your online life once he knows your password, especially if you don’t change it from site to site. “There are plenty of examples (like the classic ‘Mugged in London‘ scam) that demonstrate why it’s important to take steps to help secure your activities online,” writes Google Security product manager Nishit Shah on the Official Google Blog.

“Your Gmail account, your photos, your private documents—if you reuse the same password on multiple sites and one of those sites gets hacked, or your password is conned out of you directly through a phishing scam, it can be used to access some of your most closely-held information.”

The idea behind two-step verification is that it relies on something you know — your password — as well as something you have — your phone. A hacker or a thief may gain access to one of them, the theory goes, but it’s far more unlikely that they’ll have both.

Which is all well and good, but it also means that there’s a new golden rule for Google account holders: Never, ever store your password anywhere on your mobile device.

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(Founder Stories) Fred Wilson On Frothy Valuations

With acquisition feelers out to Twitter for a reported $8 billion to $10 billion, bubble talk is once again the topic of discussion. It’s a recurring theme, and on this episode of Founder Stories venture capitalist Fred Wilson talks to Chris Dixon about the frothy valuations in Techland. Wilson is careful not to use the word “bubble,” but this is familiar ground for him. He he has been vocal about signs that he finds disturbing, such as investors chasing returns and startups with little more than three founders in a garage getting bid up for no reason. In the video he specifically calls out Quora and its instant $86 million valuation as troubling. Yet by the end of the clip he also concludes that Facebook is going to be worth a lot more than $50 billion.

Wilson’s firm Union Square Ventures is an investor in Twitter (although this show was taped before the current deal talk rumors came out), as well as Zynga, Tumblr, Etsy, and Foursquare. So he’s seen a lot of the rising valuations first-hand, and is benefiting from his early investments in these companies. But it is getting harder and harder, and he is honest about the fact that sometimes he is getting outbid by other VC firms like Sequoia. Dixon, who in addition to running Hunch is a very active angel investor through Founder Collective argues that there isn’t a bubble at all because the fundamentals of Internet companies are so much stronger now and creating real revenues.

Wilson lived through the last bubble in the 1990s and subsequent bust. In the video below, he talks about that experience and how his previous VC firm, Flatiron Partners, “essentially folded” after the market blew up. He says that put “a chip on my shoulder” to prove himself again with Union Square Ventures, which raised its first fund in the dark days of 2004 when many people were convinced the Internet was a “scam.” But he and his partners were investing in Web applications when nobody else would touch them. Dixon compares it to the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009, when Sequoia’s R.I.P slides were being passed around, and how that is turning out to be the time when he made his best investments. Now things are much more competitive.

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