Android Social Media

Panoramic Pictures for Android with Pano

Jacob S Paulsen — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:18:10 +0000

A few months ago Android was running a promotion where a large number of paid apps were only 10 cents each. Among those that I bought up I purchased Pano. Pano is an amazing, quality, application for taking panoramic pictures. After posting the above picture of the lake near my house on Facebook, a few friends made comments about my “nice wide-angle lens.”

The app is self-explanatory. You take a picture and as you move your phone from left to right you will see a transparent remnant of the previous snapshot that you can line up over the top of the left edge of the following image. This process continues until you have taken in everything that you need.

I’ve seen a few other apps of this nature in the past and they always left me disappointed. To be honest I don’t know how this one is as good as it is at taking panoramic pictures.

Birthday Reminders App for Android: Birthdays

Jacob S Paulsen — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:00:57 +0000

I like to remember people’s birthdays. It gives me a good excuse to keep in touch with my friends at least once per year and it helps remind them that I care.

Google Contacts has a Birthday field but it doesn’t translate to Android really and there is certainly no real way to be notified or reminded of your contact’s birthdays as part of the stock user interface.

I recently found this app called Birthdays. The app automatically reads all the birthdays from your Google Contacts and organizes them is an easy to view list. You can also set multiple reminders for upcoming birthdays. In a Facebook world I like to call my friends the day before their birthday and this app can be set to remind you as many days before as you would like.

It can also be setup to integrate with different types of calendars. The app also features a variety of different size widgets that you can use. I personally don’t take advantage of them but hey you might love a birthday widget on your screen.

The app is free so check it out.

Free Daily App from the Amazon Appstore

Jacob S Paulsen — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:54:09 +0000

I took for granted that it was common knowledge that Amazon.com gives away a free, paid app everyday. I was talking to a group of Android users at my office who were absolutely delighted to find out about this. After all, different from Apple users, us Android folk are famously cheap.

So, if you didn’t already know, you can get a different paid app everyday for free from Amazon. In my experience these are generally games, but I have found some great productivity and business apps there including Tasks N Todos, Documents To Go, and Splashtop.

Just navigate to Amazon.com on your phone and click on the link for Mobile Apps. Download and install the Appstore app on your phone (follow the directions). You will need to change something in your settings to allow the installation of un-verified apps. Once installed you can just browse the Amazon Appstore the same way you do the Android Market (Google Play).

Best Free Android Widgets Part 2

CPM and Ads Calculator for Internet Marketing Professionals

Jacob S Paulsen — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:47:07 +0000

Since I spend a good about of my time working on internet marketing campaigns it seems that there are far too many mathematical formulas or excel spreadsheets involved in my advertising calculations. Most of the time I am dealing with three variables which are, CPM (or CPC), Impressions, and Cost (or Budget). With two of the three variables I can calculate the third.

To assist in these efforts I found a wonderful app called Ads CPM and CPC Calculator.

Ad CPM and CPC Calculator is an advertising calculator that lets you compute eCPC, eCPM, conversion rate, CTR, cost per conversion, and campaign cost. You will never need to do tedious hand calculations again. Ad CPM and CPC Calculator comes with three calculators:

- Ad Rate Calculator lets you estimate the campaign cost by CPM and CPC
- Ad Inventory Calculator estimates impression and clicks given the budget
- Ad Spent Summary Calculator computes eCPC, eCPM, conversion rate, CTR, cost per conversion, and campaign cost

This is really a great app. Its light and fast to open and to run its calculations. Currently the app is free but I think I would be willing to pay a few bucks for it.

>>Download Free

Calculations App Does Conversions of All Types on Android

Jacob S Paulsen — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:48:53 +0000

I hate math and have yet to find a real life need for a calculator more effective than the one that came stock on my Android. That having been said there are plenty of other types of calculations I need to do on a regular basis.

Check out the Calculations app for Android. There are plenty more places the developer could take this. I really like the mortgage calculator that is built in. There are a lot of different variables that are important when calculating a mortgage payment and there are a shockingly low number of mortgage calculators that are any good in the Android Market.

The app also features a tip calculator but honestly… do you really need a calculator to figure out 15 or 20% of your bill?

This app can complete the following calculations and conversions:

Currency converter for up to 10 selected currencies
Measurement converter for lengths, area, temperature, volume, weight, and time
Mortgage calculator with points, insurance, maintenance, taxes, bi-weekly vs. monthly payment, and amortization schedule, which is available in the Pro version only
Tipping calculator to quickly see a range of percentages based on your bill and service quality to determine a tip

>>Download today

Realtor Android Apps: Real Estate Smartphone Tools

Best Computer Backup Also Available in Mobile Browser

Jacob S Paulsen — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:57:15 +0000

Lets face it, I have lived in fear. I was always scared that my computer would crash or be stolen and I would lose all of my files, settings, and personal data. I’ve been evaluating various backup options that available and recently I found one that caught my eye.

MyPCBackup.com is a service that has two essential features that matter to me when looking for a pc back up service. The first thing I wanted to avoid is a service that backs up all my files to an external hard-drive or online server that I an unable to access anything from. In my experience some of these backup services just create one big file that they backup. This big file doesn’t help you at all if you need to quickly access a single file. You are forced to fully restore everything in order to access any one thing.

MyPCBackup.com allows you to remotely access every individual file from anywhere. In addition to file sharing, unlimited storage, multiple computers, and the ability to access old versions of your files… the only critical feature that I’m interested in is mobile access. MyPCBackup has a great mobile version of their website that is easy to access from my Android’s browser.

All around it seems to be a full set of features for a backup solution. I’m impressed and hope you will check it out.

Tasks N Todos: Latest Google Task Syncing Application

Jacob S Paulsen — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:14:19 +0000

It seems that I’m never satisfied by my task list app on my Android phone. I’ve been through several in the past and most recently I was using Astrid. I happened to come upon Tasks N Todos because it was the free app of the day in the Amazon App Store several weeks ago. It took me awhile after downloading it before I decided to open it and give it a try. I had been having some issues with Astrid’s sync being less than wonderful.

As first glance I would describe Tasks N Todos as simple and clean. Its easy to use and has an intuitive interface. It syncs directly with Google Tasks and does not have its own online interface like Astrid. This, I felt, was a PRO and a CON. Good because a direct sync between phone and Google Tasks would prevent any funky issues or problems with the reliability of that sync. Bad because the Google Tasks interface is, as you know, lame at best and short on many features.

The interface, like I said, is clean and easy to use. Setting reminders for an individual task is easy and changing due dates is also a simple task. You swype from task list to task list from right to left.

You can filter and sort your tasks by a variety of different criteria but I generally just want to see all my tasks sorted by due date.

The app also features a few widgets and shortcuts that can be placed on a home screen for fast access to certain tasks.

I hope you love it as much as I do… now if we can just get Google to do something about that web interface!

>>Download Tasks N Todos

Splashtop Remote Desktop Connection from Phones, Tablets, and Other Computers

Jacob S Paulsen — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:07:22 +0000

Ok, so if you follow this site you know we have a small crush on a remote desktop application called PhoneMyPc. We have reviewed it twice in the past and frankly I’ve always felt it was the best. There is just one feature I have always longed for… the ability to remote connect to my computers from my other computers in addition to my Android phone.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time its enough to just open the app on my phone and quickly get done what needs to be done on any one of my computers that is powered on. Sometimes however it would be faster or altogether more plausible to get some work done on the home or work computer if I could login from the other computer.

There are plenty of other applications out there like LogMeIn and GoToMyPC that allow for this but I figure that as long as I already have something installed for my phone it should work computer to computer as well. Not to mention that I assume pay a one time price for apps on my phone than a monthly subscription to one of the service providers I mentioned.

Enter Splashtop. Splashtop is comparable in most respects to PhoneMyPC except of course that they also allow computer to computer connections. They seem to have also ironed out some of the kinks in the other remote desktop apps in regards to streaming video and audio smoothly to the remote computer/device.

I picked up the app as the free app of the day in the Amazon App Store several weeks ago.

Here is a complete description as provided by the developers:

Complete Virtual Remote Desktop Access

With this app, optimized for your Android tablet, you can control your home computer from your Android device via Wi-Fi. Get Splashtop Remote HD and you can view your desktop, use your regular Web browser with your plug-ins and bookmarks, and access all your important PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and Outlook files.

Liberate Your Multimedia

Want to listen to music or watch movies that are “trapped” on your computer while you’re on the go? Not a problem. Splashtop Remote Desktop HD can smoothly stream high-res video and audio from your PC or Mac to your Android device. Watch videos in any format (including Flash), listen to your entire music library, and play PC games to your heart’s content.

View and listen to all kinds of media formats

Do It All, Wherever You Are

With Splashtop Remote Desktop you can:

•Watch Flash videos (Hulu, AOL Video, Yahoo Video, etc.), DVDs, and Media Center content

• Listen to music stored on your computer in any format (WMV, Real, WMA, MP3, AAC, etc.)

• Play 3D games such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft, Civilization V, and more

• Play Facebook Flash games like FarmVille, CityVille, Pet Society, Cafe World, FrontierVille, and Mafia Wars

• Use non-Android programs such as Quicken and iPhoto

To use this app you must install Splashtop Streamer on your home computer; this can be downloaded free from Splashtop’s website. A dual-core CPU is strongly recommended for the best performance.

Splashtop Remote Desktop HD works only devices running Android OS 2.2 or higher or Android 3.x tablets. It supports all versions of Windows 7, Vista, and XP, including Home Premium. Mac users must have at least Snow Leopard (10.6).

>>Download Splashtop Remote Desktop HD

Addicted to Evernote for Android: Epitome of Note Taking

Jacob S Paulsen — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:41:08 +0000

When Evernote first made it’s big splash I wasn’t impressed. There are so many note taking apps in the world that I just didn’t understand what made Evernote so special. That has changed.

The biggest selling point for me is Evernote‘s desktop application. I have a slight obsession with almost any app that I can deploy on all of my various computers and my phones… all synced in real time. Evernote’s desktop application is easy to navigate and easy to create notes. You can drag and drop ANYTHING into a note and the text editor makes it easy to do professional text copy just like you might in Microsoft Word.

Where Evernote Is Different

Evernote is not Dropbox and it hasn’t replaced Dropbox for me. Dropbox allows me to access files from anywhere… and the most recent version of those files. Dropbox does not allow me to compose new files on the fly. Evernote fills that void. I can create new content (photos, videos, web clippings, text, or any combination of these) on the fly from any of my devices and it will sync across all devices.

Evernote is not a device only note taking app. Evernote does allow you to compose new notes from your Android phone but it also has the desktop application that makes it easy to access, share, and compose new notes from your computer. This makes it particularly useful when putting together a multimedia note that will include text or photos that you copy over from the web or other applications.

Evernote allows sharing. You can quickly share a specific note or notebook with other Evernote users. This makes it easier than before to collaborate on new projects.

The Android App is very feature rich. It includes password protection and has a very clean and easy user interface. From the app you can use the camera to quickly create new notes. Within the app you still have a great text editor for Bold, Italic, Underline, Number/Bullet lists, and check mark boxes. Its easy to use speech to text and to attach pictures, audio, video, or other files to a note.

Download Evernote today.

Virtual Note-Taking and Journal App, Powered by Catch.com

Google Translate: Over 60 languages right in your pocket

Adam Neighbors — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:08:27 +0000

It’s becoming rather apparent that Google is doing its best to take over the world. So it comes as no surprise that the company that is trying to take over the world has a useful and easy to use app that will help you talk with it. The Google Translate app takes the effectiveness of the Google Translate webpage and puts it in a comprehensive mobile format. Making it easy to translate to and from the over 60 languages available. The app’s sleek design is a very example of what consumers look for in a mobile phone application. It has a nice simple layout with perfectly sized buttons and display.

However amazing the app’s design is, the place where the app really shines above all others is its features. After five minutes with the app it becomes clear how many features this seemingly simple app has. To start with you can choose what language you’re translating from and what language you’re translating too, but where the Google Translate app shines above most of it’s competitors in this aspect is the famous “Detect Language” feature that so many Google Translate users have come to love. This is an obviously useful tool if you are unaware as to what language you’re starting out with and need it translated into your native tongue quickly.

Easily detecting a language is just the start of this app’s features. The Google Translate has a “SMS translation” button that with a few simple clicks can translate any message you’ve received into any of the languages available without having to copy and paste. Inside this nice little feature is the “Conversation Mode”. In this feature the user can simply talk to their phone as if in a conversation and it would tell them how to say it in the preferred language. Although, the conversation mode is in alpha, and does have some flaws, it does provide a nice look into what is to come.

The Google Translate app will become a useful tool for someone going on a trip to Mexico as well as a person about to make a business deal with a Chinese speaking partner. The app has a sturdy present build, and shows potential for its future updates. It’s free in the Android Market so I suggest checking it out.