I’ve decided to use Google Now exclusively for a long list of tasks. I’m calling it the Google Now Diet.

Here’s why I’m doing it. New technology is great. Trouble is, we’re all stuck with habits formed by old technology.

For example, when you want to search, what do you do? I habitually type in a search in the URL address bar or go to Google.com.

When I want to give myself a reminder, I tend to open the Gmail app on my phone and send myself an email.

And when I want to play a YouTube video, I thumb through the apps, find the YouTube app, open it, tap on the search field and type in the name of the video or song I’m looking for.

I know that Google Now does all this stuff easier, faster and better. Yet my habits were formed in olden days before Now existed. So I forget to use Google Now.

The good news is that there’s a way to break old habits and form new ones. And that is the diet concept — limit yourself only to the new way of doing things.

And that’s why I’m going on the Google Now diet.

Notification Center, introduced with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, has quickly become an integral part of the Mac OS experience, replacing third-party apps like Growl and the like with a built-in system for notifying you of system and other events on your Mac.

Let’s take a look, then, at five tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your use of Notification Center, including getting rid of it all together, if that’s your thing.

iOS 7 concepts are a dime a dozen these days. Everyone is coming up with short video walkthroughs of what they think the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system will look like.

Rumors say that Apple is making iOS 7 “flatter” and less skeuomorphic (no pool table felt in Game Center, for example). That has led a lot of concept creators to what I think are, frankly, some overdone conclusions. Yesterday on Twitter I made the comment that, “My gut somehow tells me that all of these iOS 7 concepts are horribly wrong.” I haven’t seen a single iOS 7 concept that actually looks believable, well… until now.

Oddly named social photo sharing app, Oggl is available now in the App Store. It’s currently invite-only, so you’ll need to download the app and request an invite. Once you do that, you’ll be in line to get a spot in this new experiment from Hipstamatic, one of the first “put a filter on it” photo app developers in the iOS space.

Hipstamatic wants to position this app as more than just a way to snap retro-looking photos of your dinner, but a way to capture and curate some of the best iPhone photography around.

Hero Academy is a pretty fantastic iOS strategy game that plays out like a cross between chess and a tactical role playing game (RPG), played against a single opponent in asynchronous turns. Developer Robot Entertainment has created an experience that’s equal parts dead easy to learn and super fun to play, with a depth of tactics and strategy gameplay that hits the sweet spot for a fun on the go game.

Well, Hero Academy is now available on the Mac App Store, and it’s free to download and play.

Yeah, we get it: Passbook is awesome. It’s also woefully under-populated with only a handful or three of official apps.

But look, Passbook files aren’t even that special. They’re just specially formatted computer files with a .pkpass extension. What’s neat about that is that anyone can create one of these files, and then send them to you in email, or have you download them from the web. That way, you can take advantage of Passbook system without being limited to the official Passbook apps on your iPhone.

Here’s how.

If you’re looking for a new solution to back up your iPhone’s photos to the cloud and access them on other devices, Amazon has a new solution for you. The company just launched it’s new iOS app, Amazon Cloud Drive Photos, that lets you upload your photos to Cloud Drive.

Nothing’s driving design nerds as crazy as the rumor that Jony Ive is taking a torch to iOS’s egregious skeuomorphic design elements and coming up with something for iOS 7 a lot more modern and flat like Windows 8.

In truth, any hopes that Ive is going to completely raze the ground of iOS skeuomorphism for iOS 7 are probably optimistic: Ive hasn’t had enough time, and it’s just too deeply ingrained into the operating system. More likely, Ive’s sensibilities will more immediately be felt in more subtle pairing-downs, like the way Apple’s Podcast app had the reel-to-reel player removed in a recent version.

But what does Jony Ive eventually want iOS to look like? A stunning new concept video has a very compelling take on that question.

While I think I’m finally coming to terms with Notification Center, and it’s becoming a normal part of my daily work routine, there are some folks out there who may not like it at all.

For those people, here’s a pretty simple way to get rid of the Notification Center from your Mac, menu bar icon and all.

Android doesn’t look like it’s about to lose any of its market share to competing platforms any time soon. During the first quarter of 2013, Google’s platform powered a whipping 59.9% of all smart mobile devices sold as total shipments hit 308.7 million units.

Apple’s iOS, on the other hand, was installed on just 19.3% of devices — despite the success of its iPhones and iPads.