8 must have mobile applications and services

Think your cellphone can work a trifle more harder than you do? Think it can keep you that much more connected to work, friends and family? Here’s a list of applications that you should have on your cellphone to keep you happy.



FoxyTag is a collaborative application which warns you 15 seconds before a speed camera. Now before you go all crazy and get a Bugatti Veyron from somewhere and go berserk on the roads after you get FoxyTag, read this from their website.
“FoxyTag motivates neither speeding nor any other risky behavior, but allows the driver to concentrate on the road instead of having their eyes fixed on the speedometer.” Right said.




With ZYB, you can be sure that you’ll never lose your contacts and calendar ever again. It safely stores all your calender/contacts online and you can synchronize it with a single click. Can be a boon when you are migrating cell phones or have just plain lost it; mind and/or mobile.


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Fring is to the mobile what Digsby is to the PC. It can keep you connected to Skype, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, ICQ, AIM, Yahoo and Twitter. You’ve also got push mail and video streaming for screaming out loud! Agreed most of you don’t use most of things mentioned here, but a long options list is never a bad thing. Over and above that you can make VoIP calls as well, but in India, you’re going to get royally screwed with the exorbitant data transfer rates when making calls via VoIP. So, if you’re an Indian and have escaped recession, make VoIP calls only when you are in Wi-Fi hotspots.
(If you are having connectivity issues with Fring, you can also give eBuddy a shot. Head to m.ebuddy.com for a quick WAP fix or download the application from their site.)




Shozu is basically a photo and video upload application with quite a comprehensive list of destinations to where you can upload them. Flickr, Picasa and PhotoBucket are just the tip of the iceberg. It also brings Facebook right in your hands and you can do a fair bit with it. Upload images, update descriptions, check out friends’ photo feeds and keep track of events. Shozu can also double up as a mobile blogger’s paradise with support for Wordpress, Blogger, Windows Live Spaces, Live Journal and what have you. And if you happen to have been bitten by the reporter bug, you can also report to BBC, CNN and Reuters with your pictures and videos. This thing also allows you to upload via FTP. Just falls short of taking your dog for a walk.



Like using Google Maps to find directions from your PC and laptop? You’re going to love Google Maps on Mobile then. It offers you the complete functionality of Google Maps right in the palm of your hands. You can switch from maps to terrain view to satellite view with a click and also find the best routes. And your phone need not have GPS inbuilt for using this. It uses approximation to well, approximate your location within 500 mts. Also, it’d have been great if Google compressed the data before sending it to us hapless Indian users. One simple map loading, zoom-in and zoom-out sequence takes up a good 0.25MB of data. What? Don’t look at me like that.

If you ask me, Opera Mini can easily be called the best innovation after the cellphone phone itself. A mid-server sitting somewhere in the Obama-land compresses all your web pages and sends it to you at just 1/10th of the size of the original web page. Also you can store all your bookmarks on Opera’s server and synchronize them between your PC and mobile; very useful when upgrading or such like. Supports uploading files, saving web pages, has a RSS reader and has a few themes in the latest version to suit your whims and fancies

If you are a Windows Mobile or Symbian S60 user, you could also try Skyfire.

GMail for Mobile is a simple Java application to access your Gmail account. It’s definitely faster and more efficient than trying to access it from your browser. Only problem is, you can’t attach anything.

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Wouldn’t the world be a better place if you could read your voice mail rather than hear it? This text could then be organized in so many ways and you could build a humongous archive of all your voice mails for future reference. Alright, this thing is still in the making but looks promising. Do signup and get yourself on the waiting list.
And oh yeah, if you’re a developer, they have a big buck challenge happening.

Eye Soothing Effect with F.Lux

What?

A simple software that decides what colour temperature is right for your eyes at a particular time.



Why?

Ever sat late into the night completing some project and trudged right in to the morning only to find the sunlight pierce your world? Or lost your sleep because the monitor you were working was a tad too bright? Right from your childhood, you were advised against seeing television in the night or in dark rooms. That’s because our eyes expect to see something mellow in the dark. And bright things during the day.

Erm.. so?

Enter F.Lux which according to your geographical location decides how bright or not your monitor should be. During the day, it’ll be nice and bright as usual but as the day starts giving way to the night, F.Lux will start decreasing the colour temperature. This ensures that you do not strain your eyes whilst burning the midnight oil. And it also might help cure insomnia for those who end their day looking at a monitor and working their assess off right up to the time they hit the sack.

Really?

I, for one can testify the fact that its far better looking at the F.Lux-ed up monitor than just dimming the whole thing down a few notches. And this might sound a bit weird, but I guess the creative juices flow better when your monitor is not overwhelming you with its brightness.

Link Me!

Download F.Lux

The Best Twitter Apps for your Mobile Phone

If you try accessing Twitter from the browser of a mobile phone, Twitter will automatically serve you the mobile-optimized version of their site. However, if in case Twitter fails to recognize your smartphone, you can manually type m.twitter.com to directly access the mobile site of Twitter from your phone.

The Best Mobile Applications for Twitter

Now that’s one way to use Twitter from your mobile phone. You also have a wide variety of mobile apps for Twitter that not only offer a much better experience than Twitter’s mobile site but they also integrate with some of your phone functions like the built-in camera. Have a look!

1. Twitter Apps for BlackBerry

1a. OpenBreak – Originally known as TwitterBerry, OpenBreak is one of the most popular Twitter apps for BlackBerry. You can take a picture with your BlackBerry camera and directly post it to Twitter via TwitPic or yfrog using TwitterBerry.
The app will automatically recognize #hashtags in the tweets and a notification icon will show you the number of new messages in your Twitter timeline just like your BlackBerry displays notifications for unread emails or missed calls.
1b. UberTwitter – Another popular Twitter client for BlackBerry, UberTwitter is location-aware so it can automatically update your location based on the cell tower information even if your BlackBerry phone doesn’t support GPS (like Google Latitude). The latest beta of UberTwitter also includes support for Twitter Lists.
1c. Seesmic – With Seesmic, you can track all your saved searches and Twitter lists inside your BlackBerry phone. Just like most other BlackBerry apps, Seesmic can run in the background and notify you of new direct messages and @replies via the famililar notification icons.

2. Twitter Apps for Nokia Phones

2a. Tweets60 – As the name suggests, Tweets60 is a native Twitter client for Nokia S60 smartphones that is available in both free and pro versions. This application is primarily for users who just want to quickly update their own status on Twitter as well as follow what their other friends are saying on Twitter.
The pro version supports additional features like the ability to post images to TwitPic and follow search terms on Twitter.
2b. Gravity – Gravity is a hugely popular and powerful Twitter client for Nokia S60 smartphones. With Gravity, you can manage multiple Twitter accounts, save links from tweets to your delicious account, post pictures to any of the Twitter-friendly photo sharing site like TwitPic of YFrog and it obviously supports all the other Twitter functions like retweets, direct messages, favorites, etc.
You can download a 10-day trial version of Gravity from the Ovi Store.
2c. Snaptu – Snaptu is an all-in-one application that lets you manage your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and even your Google Picasa account from the mobile phone. Snaptu’s Twitter application provides all the basic Twitter functionality – status updates, direct messages, @replies – while their Facebook component lets you update statuses and you can also read and write messages using Facebook email.
Snaptu works with any Java-enabled mobile phone including Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola models.

3. Twitter Apps for Windows Mobile

3a. Tiny Twitter – This is a free Twitter application for Windows Mobile that provides all the basic Twitter functionality. One of the unique features in Tiny Twitter is that you can temporarily suspend a Twitter user so that his tweets won’t appear in your timeline though he would still remain in your follow list.
3b. PockeTwit – This is another popular Twitter client for Windows Mobile with support for multiple accounts. You can take a picture from your camera and post it directly to Twitter via PockeTwit. The application features a nice sliding interface so you can drag the tweets to the left to see all the actions that you can take on that tweet. PockeTwit is free and open-source.
3c. Twikini – The app integrates with Windows Media Player so you can tweet the name of the song that you are currently listening to. Twikini can shrink URLs using Bit.ly or TinyURL so you have more space for text and it also displays Twitpic images inline. If you have a GPS enabled mobile phone, you can also add your location to the tweet with Twikini. The app costs $4.95 though a 14-day trial is available for free.

4. Twitter Apps for Android Phones

4a. Twidroid – This is probably the most popular Twitter app for Android phones – the basic version is free but you’ll have to get the PRO version in case you want to manage multiple Twitter accounts from the same application.
Twidroid supports all features of Twitter including Twitter lists. You can shake your Android phone to fetch the latest tweets but this again requires the pro edition.
4b. Seesmic – With Seesmic for Android, you can capture photos or record videos and share them on directly Twitter via yFrog. The app will also let you share you current location on Twitter. You can configure Seemic to notify you with a custom ringtone (or a blinking light) when there’s a new @reply or direct message for you on Twitter.

5. Twitter Apps for iPhone and iPod Touch

5a. Tweetdeck – TweetDeck is a brilliant application that you may use to manage both Facebook and your multiple Twitter accounts from the iPhone or iPod Touch.
The app will automatically sync with TweetDeck Desktop so if you have created any custom search columns on the desktop, they’ll also become available inside the mobile app (and vice-versa). Just shake your iPhone to check if there are any new updates.
5b. Tweetie – This $3 app is one of the most popular Twitter client for iPhone with a very impressive UI. There’s an offline mode so you can do things like reading past tweets, following new people, replying to tweets, etc. even without a data connection. You also get a bookmarklet that lets you post links from Safari directly to Twitter via the Tweetie app.
5c. Twittelator – One of the unique features of Twittelator is that it lets you record and tweet both audio and video clips from your iPhone. You can even tweet the name of the song that’s currently playing on your iPhone. The basic version of Twittelator is available for free on the iTunes store.
5d. Echofon – This is light-weight Twitter client for the iPhone that is free and supports nearly all the basic function of Twitter. The $5 pro version of Echofon supports push notifications so you’ll get an alert when another Twitter user sends you a direct message or mentions you in his or her tweet.

Screenshots of Twitter Mobile Apps

More ways to use Twitter on mobile phones

If you can’t find a decent Twitter application for your mobile phone, you should check out Dabr. This is like an improved version of Twitter’s mobile site.
Dabr will display a more detailed profile of Twitter users so you can quickly decide whether or not to follow a particular user. It will auto-convert Twitpic and other picture URLs into thumbnails so you can view images directly in your Twitter timeline without having to click the click. And since Dabr is a mobile website, you can use it from just about any mobile phone, not just a smartphone.

Another option is email. Just associate your Twitter account with Posterous and then you’ll be able to post updates on Twitter by sending emails to twitter@posterous.com. Whatever you put in the email subject will be converted into your Twitter status.
This email to twitter option will be quite handy if your phone plan allows unlimited email but you need to pay for every extra byte that you download on the phone (lot of BlackBerry plans are like this).

Find song online though lyrics not remembered

It happens all the time. You are sitting in a restaurant with friends or driving to work and there’s some beautiful music playing on the FM radio station. You would love to buy a copy of that music album for yourself but the problem is that you didn’t get the lyrics so how do you find out the name of that song. “What’s the name of that song ? I don’t remember the lyrics”
Search engines like Google or Bing won’t be of much help unless you know a couple of words from the song lyrics or have some clue about the name of the artist or the band. How do you then identify the name of that lovely song?
Well, here are some of the best music recognition services that can help you discover song names without having to know the lyrics. You may use them to identify music playing from the radio, TV, Internet or that CD playing in the bar.

1. Find Music with your Mobile Phone

1a. Shazam – Shazam is a mobile application that you may use to find song names from your iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android or your Nokia S60 phone. You may also use Shazam on an iPod Touch provided you have an external microphone.
Simply install the Shazam application, hold your phone towards the audio source and hit the Tag button to let Shazam identify the playing music. Shazam works only with pre-recorded music and not with live performances.
The free version of Shazam will help you identify up to 5 different track per month while Shazam Encore, the paid version, offers unlimited tracking for $4.99. If the tune cannot be recognized, there’s no charge. If you are in the UK, you can use just about any mobile phone to recognize music with Shazam – just dial 2580 and hold your phone to the music.
1b. MusicID – Hold your iPhone up to some music and MusicID will tell you what song is playing. It’s a $3 iPhone App available worldwide but if you are on AT&T, you may also use your Blackberry, Windows Mobile or any Java phone to identify music with MusicID.
Like Shazam, MusicID works only with pre-recorded music and they also have an SMS based service for people in the US that doesn’t require any downloads – just dial a short code, hold your phone up to some music and you’ll get a text message with the result.

2. Find song names using your own voice

2a. Midomi – If you have a tune that’s stuck in your head, just grab a microphone, hum that tune yourself and Midomi will be able tell you what that song is. Alternatively, you may play a short recording of that “unknown” track for Midomi to identify its name.
Unlike Shazam which is a mobile app, Midomi offers a web interface where you can can hum or sing for about 10 seconds and the service will then show you a list of matching songs. For best results, keep the volume bar in the green and avoid background noise.
Midomi is free to use online, but it also offers mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Nokia Ovi and Windows Mobile phones. You can identify songs by holding your phone up to a speaker or by singing / humming the melody into the phone itself.

3. Record a short clip to identify the music

3a. AudioTag – If you have a short recording of a song on your computer or your mobile phone, you may use the online music recognition service at AudioTag to figure out the exact name of that song.
You can upload a short audio snippet (or even a whole song) and Audio will try to identify the track title by comparing the audio to its own music database. For best results, you should either take a slice from the middle of the song or upload the whole song and the recognition engine will choose slices randomly by itself.
This can be especially useful if you can record a portion of the song on your mobile device, and then check out the song’s information whenever you go online.

4. Identify Music with help of humans

4a. WatZatSong – When computers fail to identify the song that you are looking for, you can take the help of human being who may have an idea about that song.
WatZatSong (“What’s that song?”) is a social site where you can upload a short MP3 audio recording of the song (or record yourself by humming) and other members of the site can then help you guess the exact song name. The suggestions won’t come instantly but you can make their task a bit easier by proving more details about the song like the language in which it is sung or the music style.
You can cross-post the same WatZatSong  request to other social sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. so your entire network can help you in the search.
4b. Name My Tune – Sing or hum a short clip of the song you are trying to find the name of. Once you are done recording and enter the Genre and Era that you think the song most likely fits in. They’ll send you an email when other people on that site are able to recognize your tune.

5. Use a virtual keyboard to find the song name

5a. Musipedia – With Musipedia, you can search for a song by either playing it on a virtual piano keyboard or by whistling it to the computer using any microphone.
Musipedia is styled after Wikipedia and works best at finding classical music. Unlike Shazam which can will only find songs that exactly match the recording, Musipedia can identify all music that contain a particular melody that you just recorded by humming or through the computer keyboard.
5b. MelodyCatcher – If you can play the tune on a virtual keyboard, MelodyCatcher can help you find the name of the song tune you’re looking for.
With a simple Java-based onscreen keyboard, simply use your mouse to enter the melody, click search, and MelodyCatcher will show you a list of matching songs from across the web. You do not need to enter the full melody: the first 5-7 notes will usually be sufficient to identify a melody.

 courtesy : Amit Aggarwal

Cannot Open a Particular Website?

Your computer is connected to the Internet but you are unable to open a particular website though all the other sites are loading without issues.
For instance, you can open yahoo.com and bing.com but it takes forever to load www.google.com even though the site is up for everyone else in the world.

Step 1: Like with everything else, switch off the modem, restart the computer, and turn on the modem again. Also clear the Internet cookies and browser cache. Problem gone? No, proceed to the next step.
Step 2: Temporarily disable your computer’s firewall and close any anti-virus software that may be running in the background. If you are now able to access the websites that were previously not loading, your security program is causing the problem. As as workaround, you can add that site to the “trusted” zone in Internet Explorer and see if it works.
Step 3: Open your hosts file and see if there are any entries for sites that are currently unreachable from your computer. The hosts file is located in the following folder:

c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Step 3: Try a remote screen capture. For instance, if the URL of the error site is abc.com, try opening aviary.com/http://abc.com in your browser. This will help you make sure that the site you are trying to access is not down at the source.
Step 4: Clear your DNS cache and run the ping and traceroute commands against the problematic site to make sure that it is not an ISP specific issue.

ipconfig /flushdns
tracert www.error-website.com
ping www.error-website.com

If the DNS server is an issue, you can easily switch to Google DNS or OpenDNS without having to call the ISP’s support. However, if the ping and traceroute connections are successful but the sites remain unreachable, proceed to the next step.
Step 5. Reset the modem to factory defaults and re-configure it with the same username and password that was provided by the ISP. You can reset the modem by pressing a pin inside the hole located at the back of the modem for about 10 seconds. Or you can call your ISP support and let them guide you through the steps over phone.
The last step is very likely to fix your internet connectivity problem.

Check ur mobile broadband connection

There are hundreds of tools available to test broadband speed of the internet broadband connection that you are using, but most of them work with just the computers and no other web browsers like mobile phone browser etc. To check the broadband speed that your mobile phone browser can pull up, here is a good testing tool -
Mspeed by dslreports.com
This is a very simple tool which is made for your WAP browser of mobile phones, and tries to download a file of small size, to test the speed of broadband that you are using.

We attempt to convince your mobile device to download a measured amount of data, compare this to minimal data, and calculate your effective latency (time for one request) and effective download speed.

Just open the site from your mobile browser and you would see a screen -



Then you need to select the file size, 1kb, 50kb or 100kb depending on the speed you expect your internet

to be. There are bigger file sizes too, but you may get that option when they notify that the size is too small for the speed of internet connection. Generally a 50kb selection is ideal, select that and it would proceed to the file download -



The speed might be higher usually when checked through the computer but the capacity of pulling the broadband weight in mobile is usually lesser.
The tool also displays the IP information, DNS agent, browser etc. information if prompted to do so.



Check out the tool at www.dslreports.com/mspeed

Are Online Courses for You?

 

 

Ask Yourself 10 Questions Before Signing Up for any Online Courses

Online courses can offer tremendous opportunities and open career doors, but before you sign up, take some time and ask yourself the following 10 questions:

 



1. Am I comfortable using a computer, the Internet, and email?
You don’t have to be a computer expert by any means, but you should have a good working knowledge of computers and possibly even certain programs depending on your course.

2. Do I have reliable access to the Internet?
All the computer knowledge in the world won’t help you succeed in online courses if you can’t count on your Internet connection. And since connections can fail at any time, be sure to have a back-up plan as well, perhaps a local Internet cafe or even a trusted friend’s computer if you’re in dire straits.
3. Do I enjoy working and learning on my own, at my own pace?
Online courses are great because many give you the freedom to be an independent learner, but if that isn’t something you enjoy or excel at, online courses may not be for you.
4. Do I have the time and energy to commit to online courses?
Don’t be fooled into thinking that online courses take less time and energy than traditional courses on campus; you’ll save time on travel, but you’ll also be spending a lot more time on online discussions.

5. Do I manage time effectively?
Taking online courses mean that you decide when you will read and learn materials, participate in discussions, and study; you must be able to plan your schedule on your own taking into account all of your obligations.
6. Do I need a flexible schedule?
If you have work or family commitments that require flexibility in scheduling, online courses may be the right option for you as you continue your education.

7. Am I comfortable asking for help and more information from instructors and peers?
Chances are that throughout your online courses, you will come across material that is difficult to understand or even simply not downloading correctly. You may need to contact your instructor and/or peers on a regular basis, so you should be comfortable doing so.
8. Am I a strong reader and enjoy text-based learning?
Although online courses often include visual components as well, for the most part you will be learning through reading texts, materials, and email discussions. College-level.

9. Am I driven, motivated, and capable of pushing myself to succeed?
Your success in online courses is almost entirely up to you and your desire to learn, so you need to know how to push yourself to do your very best without having an instructor or fellow students in your face to offer motivation.

10. Is there an online course I’m interested in taking?
So you’ve answered all the questions above and you think online courses are for you? Well now is the time to find out whether online courses are offered in your discipline. Course offerings are growing all the time, but some industries offer many more opportunities than others, so be sure to have a good look around to determine whether online courses are an option for you.

Client/project web links

Fauna & Flora International/FFI Leading global conservation organisation based in Cambridge, UK	Durrell Wildlife Jersey-based conservation organisation and zoological park
m-GovWorld Specialist mobile-governance website service based in India	SMS Solutions A site dedicated to SMS and MMS solutions
ResourceAfrica South African based environmental and development organisation	In-Tuition.net UK-based provider of a range of email solutions targeted at small businesses
Wildscreen/ARKive On-line 'Noahs Ark' containing digital multimedia portraits of global wildlife	WorldPay Global electronic payment solution now owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland
TTPCom Limited The leading independent supplier of silicon IP to the mobile industry	UNEP-WCMC The World Conservation Monitoring Centre of the UN Environment Programme
Cercopan Nigerian NGO promoting primate and forest conservation	Help an African Schoolchild Jersey-based charity providing help and education to street children in Zambia and Tanzania
t4cd FFI/ResourceAfrica project investigating the use of ICTs in conservation and development	Conservation Through Public Health Ugandan conservation, ICT and public health NGO working in conservation areas in Africa
Bailhache Labesse Leading law firm and advocates based in Jersey, C.I.	Vodafone The world's largest mobile community headquartered in the UK