Are you part of the new so-called ‘gig economy’? If you don’t know what the gig economy is, probably not, but even if not, you almost certainly know someone who is. According to recent statistics, 16% of the American workforce is working in the gig economy – that’s nearly 1 in 5 people. And at least one pundit factors smartphones and mobile apps into why the gig economy is growing.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has released Mobile Justice apps for eight states and counting. The Mobile Justice app, which records police brutality or encounters as they happen, and automatically uploads them to the ACLU, is available for California, Colorado, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina and Oregon with more on the way.

Everyone knows that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. And every new parent knows that we are hardwired to pay attention to the urgent cries of a child. But how many of us realize that we have been slowly, but steadily, trained to respond to every single new message notification on our phones, computers, and other electronic devices, as they happen?

Facebook has quietly enabled a new, easier way to block Facebook apps from spamming you with invitations, requests, and other annoying intrusions, and here’s how to block Facebook apps using this new convenient method. This is a welcome change, as previously you had to go to a completely different page in order to block an app (although if you want to instead block all invitations from a particular user, you still need to go to that “manage apps” page).

We brought you some of our favorite apps for 2012, and here is our list of top must-have for 2013! These apps are designed to make your life better, faster, more efficient and happier. Ok, we cannot promise that they will make you happier, but they certainly are handy little helpers.

It’s happened to most of us at one time or another. You leave your laptop open and a family member accidentally sees an email that you’d rather they didn’t (perhaps you are planning a surprise party for them), or a friend sees an embarrassing chat in your instant messenger program, or a colleague finds that website you were looking at during your lunch hour. If only there were a way to password protect individual software programs and applications (increasingly known as simply ‘apps’ ) on your Mac or Windows PC. Well, there is!

For those of you who are fed up with Siri’s lack of understanding you when ask to do a search, then the Google Voice Search app may be just what you need. When you ask Google Voice Search where the nearest taco shops around you are, unlike Siri, which will likely come back with a list of the nearest tackle shops, the Google Voice Search app will deliver your request with consistent precision.

Perhaps iOS 6’s Mapplegate was simply meant to be a great distraction from the fact that Apple is now covertly tracking users through IFA (or IDFA) tracking technology with the iOS 6 update. While Apple had disabled the tracking of iPhone users by advertisers by disallowing app developers from using the data from Apple devices through the unique serial number permanently assigned to each device, it seems that iOS 6 has brought tracking back.

It’s so easy to end up with a big collection of apps, isn’t it? There are so many free applications, so many interesting looking apps, that you can eat ’em like candy. But eventually they start taking up too much space on your iPhone, iPod or iTouch, or on your hard drive in iTunes. Here is how to remove an app from your device, from iTunes, and from your hard drive.

Ever wish you could share your Kindle books with your friends and family, Kindle to Kindle, or Kindle to Kindle reader app? The latest Kindle news is that now you can! With Amazon’s new Kindle Lending service, you can share books on Kindle which you have purchased with your friends and family, even if they don’t have a Kindle book reader of their own! They can read the books for Kindle that you loan them using the Kindle for Android application, the Kindle for Blackberry app, the Kindle for iPad and iPhone apps, or the Kindle for Mac or Kindle for PC software, all of which are free! If they have an email address, you can loan them your lendable Kindle books free!

It was only a matter of time before the legal world and the iPhone app world merged. There are now several iPhone applications that purport to help you to get divorced, by providing information, calculations and, at least by inference, advice (although of course they can’t call it legal advice without risking being hit for unauthorized practice of law – or, as we in the biz call it, UPL).

Facebook – the site that changes its interface, services, and values almost as often as we change our underwear (hint: daily), has once again announced a major change that affects all Facebook users – and users of other services – in a major way. This week’s announcement is that Facebook is now sharing it’s new “like” system with partners like Microsoft Fuse Docs, Pandora, and Yelp – and any other site that wants to feature the new Facebook social plugins – creating what Facebook calls a “social graph” or “open graph”. This means that when you “like” something on Facebook, that “like” will follow you around to Pandora, Yelp, and Microsoft Fuse Docs – and vice versa. The good news is that you can opt out of it (and we tell you how).

In case you haven’t heard yet, Amazon has announced that the Amazon Kindle is about to be opened up to 3rd-party developers, and to have its own Kindle app store, so as to create a whole new generation of Kindle applications. Which means that, yay, you’ll be able to play Sudoku on your Kindle – but without a touch screen what’s the point? – while you still can’t perform such basic no-brainers such as making a gift of a book to someone else on their Kindle.

A plague of rogue Facebook applications that are stealing user credentials – such as usernames and passwords – has been sweeping Facebook in the past week. The phishing Facebook apps work the same way that many other applications do – including sending an email to your Facebook friends, with links to click on, and when you type in your username and password, BAM! Your login credentials have been stolen.