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.

Blogal Warming

Introduction: With the number of blogs increasing exponentially, the blogosphere is under a severe threat. The writing has always been on the wall (and I’m not just talking about facebook). Too many blogs and too many heated discussions have led to the inevitable – Blogal Warming.

Of course not everyone is aware of this affliction, but it is all around us. Its tentacles have already engulfed our community and it is only a matter of time before it squeezes the life out.

As a responsible citizen of the blogosphere, I consider it my duty and privilege to inform the ignorant of this great malady.

Blogal warming broadly refers to the increase in the average temperature of systems the world over, in the past decade, caused by excessive blogging, mindless link forwarding, blog whoring, blog rolling etc. The more specific problems associated with BW will be discussed later on.

Reasons: Studies conducted over the past few days by this astute observer have helped in identifying the root of the problem. As can be readily imagined, the trouble starts when a layman decides he should start a blog. There are various reasons which can be ascribed to this.

1) Green House Effect – Sidin Vadukut says “Everyone and their mother-in-laws think they can write”. A statistical survey conducted on young bloggers has brought to light the reason for this belief – Almost 90% of the subjects admitted that this belief stemmed from having won a prize for creative writing in some inter-house competition at school.

Since the majority of our subjects happened to represent the “Green House”, we’ve dubbed this the green house effect.

In anomalous cases, winning a second prize in flower arrangement in 5th standard has also been deemed as reason enough to start writing a blog.

2) CFCs – The mere feeling that one can write would not have generated so much blogal warming. There had to be a secondary reason. This is of course well known to all of us. The glitz and glamour and the charm of blogging is a feature called comments. The number of comments obtained on one’s blogposts has become a status symbol of sorts. CFC or Craving For Comments is the major driving force behind increased BW.

Effects: The effects of Blogal Warming can readily be guessed. Some of these have been discussed.
1) Temperature Rise – As discussed before, the major effect of BW is the rise in temperature of systems. With the increasing number of blogs, the 35th tab of Mozilla Firefox (a feat once deemed impossible) has become the standard for an average browser. This devil-may-care attitude towards browsing has put immense strain on the system, causing it to heat up more than usual.

2) Holes in the Awe-zone layer – About 5% of the blogosphere consists of readable material and among this close to 1% of the bloggers are particularly awesome. This one percent, called the Awe-zone, occurs at the top of the Blogosphere. Its function is to keep out aspiring bloggers by instilling a feeling of inferiority in them.

However the rapid increase of blogs coupled by inactivity of some bloggers in the awe-zone layer, have caused holes to start appearing in the awe-zone layer. The gap between the awe-zone layer and the rest of the blogosphere has reduced.

This in turn has caused more people to take up blogging as there is someone (whose level) they can relate to in the blogosphere. (The analogy is similar to a person setting out to buy a phone for 6000 rupees. The salesman convinces him that if he can afford 6000, he can afford 7000 and get a much better phone. Once the customer agrees to this, he convinces him that he can get an 8000 rupee phone…. Finally the customer ends up buying a phone worth 13000.)

Holes in the awe-zone layer cause skin trouble. The most commonly observed affliction is an itch to blog.

3) Blogal warming as defined in the Oxford dictionary, also has a secondary meaning – “The delusion that Blogs can be used as a way to warm up to hot chicks”. The first casualty of this delusion was Paul George Tharian. Given below is the photographic evidence of this claim- a screenshot from the Orkut Scrapbook of a blogger. Start reading from the bottom and proceed to the top.

Although this can at best be defined as delusion, it is only fair that this should be included at least as a theoretical effect of blogal warming. We will call it Paul George Tharian’s ice-breaking with girls or simply melting of the Paul-ar ice ;)

Remedies:
1) The only way to combat Blogal Warming is by restoring the Awe-zone layer and putting the rest of the blogosphere way out of reach. You can all help this cause by pouring out your unbounded admiration for this blog.

2) Some people out there think that they can land chicks by blogging. It is of vital importance that we prove them wrong. This can be achieved if all girls out there fall for a single guy and tell the rest of the world that they are not available. To save the blogosphere, I’m willing to take up the cause of being that single guy. :D

Facebook Will be the Common Denominator in Social Net by 2012; Mobile Phones Overtake PCs by 2013

The consulting firm is out with their predictions for the next few years. It’s a long document.

Here are a few highlights:

By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization.

Through Facebook Connect and other similar mechanisms, Facebook will support and take a leading role in developing the distributed, interoperable social Web.

As Facebook continues to grow and outnumber other social networks, this interoperability will become critical to the success and survival of other social networks, communication channels and media sites.

Other social networks (including Twitter) will continue to develop, seeking further adoption and specializations with communication or content areas, but Facebook will represent a common denominator for all of them.

By 2015, context will be as influential to mobile consumer services and relationships as search engines are to the Web.

Whereas search provides the “key” to organizing information and services for the Web, context will provide the “key” to delivering hyperpersonalized experiences across smartphones and any session or experience an end user has with information technology.

Search centered on creating content that drew attention and could be analyzed. Context will center on observing patterns, particularly location, presence and social interactions. Furthermore, whereas search was based on a “pull” of information from the Web, context-enriched services will, in many cases, prepopulate or push information to users.

By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. According to Gartner’s PC installed base forecast, the total number of PCs in use will reach 1.78 billion units in 2013. By 2013, the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will exceed 1.82 billion units and will be greater than the installed base for PCs thereafter.

Access the Complete Document
Source: Gartner

Upload Photos To Facebook From Mobile

You can send photos from your cell phone directly to your Facebook Profile page. It's easy to do and it's a great way to share what you're doing and seeing with your friends or family.Here is How to Upload Photos To Facebook From Your Cell Phone!

First, you need to make sure that your cell phone number is registered with Facebook. If you know it already is, you can skip this para. If you aren't sure it's registered, then log into your Facebook account. Go to the top of the page and click on "Settings". This will take you to the "My Account" page.

Click on the tab that says "Mobile". On the Mobile page, click on the link that says "Register For Facebook Mobile Texts".

This will open up a box, which prompts you to choose your Country and Mobile Service Provider from two drop-down boxes. Make your selections and click on "Next".


The next box, tells you to do the following: "Using your mobile phone, send a text message containing only the letter "f" (without quotes) to 32665 (FBOOK)". Send the text message as instructed and then click on "Next".


A few seconds after you send your text to Facebook, you will receive a text back from Facebook that contains your alphanumeric mobile activation code. Go back to your Facebook page, enter the code in the box provided, and click on "Confirm".
This will take you to the Confirmation page showing that the Facebook Mobile Application has been added to your profile. Your cell phone is now setup to send photos to your Facebook Profile page.

Now that your mobile account is setup, you are actually ready to upload a photo! Take a picture with your cell phone and send it as a picture message to this address: mobile@facebook.com.

If you want to add a caption to your picture, just include it in the subject line of your message!

Very shortly, the picture you uploaded will appear on your Facebook page! It will be positioned at the top of your message column with any caption you wrote below it. Any pictures you upload will also be saved in your Profile under Photos for you and others to view later on.