Posts Tagged smartphone apps
GoGo Mobile App for iPhone, iPad, and Blackberry Review
Ever fork over for GoGo wireless Internet access when flying? It’s easy to use and makes the time literally fly! There are some affordable price packages especially for a month-long subscription perfect for those heavy flying times of the year.
But, not every airline has wifi-equipped planes, and even if they do, the entire fleet may not be equipped. It can be cumbersome to take out your laptop in a cramped coach seat to check for a wifi signal. But, the new GoGo app for iPhone/iPad/iPod touch and Blackberry devices makes it easier by detecting a signal and letting you know on your phone if it’s available. The app will soon be available for the Android too.
You can then open the app in one click and are instantly connected rather than going through the various sign-in pages on your Internet browser. You have to create a GoGo account and store your credit card before using the app. But, that helps to save time once inflight.
The free app can be downloaded from the iTunes store and saves a couple of minutes off the time it can take to log into the Internet (which when you are buying the service for a limited amount of time on a flight is appreciated).
On shorter trips when I do not travel with a laptop, this app allows me to access the Internet directly from my phone onboard.
It is worth installing on your phone simply to give you free access to the airline’s web site to check your flight status or book future flights. There’s no charge for that, which is what makes this app such a good idea for frequent travelers.
There’s an app for everything these days, but this app truly does make accessing the Internet a few clicks easier inflight.
See the Top free apps and Top paid apps on the iTunes App Store
Posted by Ramsey in Business Gear, Travel Light on July 4th, 2011
SugarSync Program is a Life Saver for Frequent Travelers
If “your whole life” is on one laptop or smart phone, what happens if you lose it? If you use a desktop at home and a laptop or small netbook when you travel, how do you make sure you have all the files you need on both devices, in their most current form? What if you need to get one of those docs from a third device, like an iPhone or iPod Touch?
I used to sweat and worry about these questions before I discovered SugarSync a couple years ago (including when I had GoToMyPC, which was often a bust). Now I’m completely relaxed when I travel, knowing I can get to anything I need from any device anywhere. It’s a file sync program, an online back-up program, a file sharing program, and a photo upload program all rolled into one. At a price that starts at $50 a year for 30GB, it’s really cheap insurance and is cheaper than a sleeping pill prescription. If all my devices get wiped out in one day and the backup hard drive does too, I’ve still got my files and photos.
I seldom feel comfortable raving about a software program as there are always a few annoyances that keep it from being as useful as it should be and most of them let me down on a regular basis. I can honestly say this SugarSync one works like a dream though. You just tag the folders you want to share between devices and with “the cloud” and let ‘er rip. After the files, photos, songs, and videos are uploaded, each time you make a change to any of the folders on any device, behind the scenes this program makes the updates. It works in the background, seldom taking up much in the way of resources or slowing down your system.
Then you can access those files from either registered device or just log into your dashboard online and view or download what you need. You can also e-mail a file link to someone (like YouSendIt), attach a photo to send them, or share a whole folder of files/photos by invitation.
What’s really cool is, you can do all this from your mobile device as well. For the iPhone or Touch you just download the app, sign in once, then magically all your stuff is there. (You can even put files into a “Magic Briefcase” to get at them quickly without searching around.) If you take a photo with your iPhone, it’s automatically added to your “mobile photos” folder and it’s on every device you have registered—no cables required.
In case all that is not enough, the file syncs are done with SSL encryption so nobody snoops, plus they keep the last five versions of your files in case you make changes and then need the old version. And on top of that, you can show off photos from your home PC or stream music that’s on your laptop from your smartphone or Touch. How cool!
There’s almost nothing I wish this could do that it doesn’t and if you don’t believe me, you can take it for a 30-day trial run or test out a 2GB version indefinitely. To me that shows a lot of confidence in the product and it’s well-deserved.
Plans range from $50 a year (or $4.99 a month) to $250 a year for 250 GB. Here’s the pricing breakdown.
SugarSync Online Backup, Sync, Share – Try FREE for 30 days
Posted by Tim L. in Business Gear, General Gear on August 26th, 2010
Bing for Smartphones: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Bing is showing some love for Windows smartphones with an updated, free app that includes turn-by-turn mapping and directions. But while improving one part of the app, Microsoft took a step backward with local searches for finding restaurants, hotels and other necessities for travelers.
First, the good news. The latest Bing version will give turn-by-turn guidance in the U.S. on my AT&T Tilt2 and other GPS-equipped smartphones running Windows Phone V6 and higher. That’s the same kind of service that some cell phone carriers still try to charge 10 bucks a month to use.
Some of the phones which will support the updated app include the Fuze, Pure, HD, Touch HD and other HTC phones, along with several Samsung models and the T-Mobile Dash 3G. If your phone is not supported, you can still find much of the same information on Bing’s mobile website, m.bing.com.
Unforttunately, the latest Bing app also cripples local searches. In previous versions, I’ve found the local searches usually very accurate for finding restaurants, hotels, shopping centers, movies and other attractions.
But something happened in the update. Now, if I search for “all restaurants” where I live, Bing returns nothing. If I search for a specific type of restaurant, such as barbecue or steak, it will return results. But the list still doesn’t seem as complete as in previous versions.
Microsoft calls it “an amazingly lifelike voice experience” when using the navigation portion of the program. In my opinion, the mapping portion of the app is not as good as other GPS programs I’ve reviewed,such as CoPilot Live or Garmin Mobile. But CoPilot Live and Garmin Mobile are not free, either.
For a free app, the latest Bing version is worth the download if it will run on your smartphone. An improved search engine for location-based attractions would make it even better.
Posted by JohnG in Business Gear, General Gear on June 14th, 2010
DROID ERIS by HTC Smartphone
Here’s my disclaimer right off the bat: I’m a relatively new smartphone adapter. I just got a Blackberry in the fall of 2009. I don’t regularly review “tech” items; I leave that to my in-the-know colleague John, who is great at writing about phones, apps and netbooks. (Me? I dig covering cute capris and flip flops.) Generally speaking, I’m a luddite — though my mom thinks I’m a tech genius since I know how to upload photos to Shutterfly. (It’s all relative.)
That all said, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to check out a touch-screen phone with the Google Android operating system — specifically, the DROID ERIS by HTC. This phone is really, really cool — it’s got some amazing capabilities and personalizing features. It syncs with your Google and Facebook accounts with the press of a button — all of your Gmail contacts are instantly loaded. You can share images you’ve taken with the phone’s camera to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Picasa easily — it really connects beautifully with the major social networks out there. It organizes all of your “communications” with each of your contacts by person — so you have a running log of all phone calls, texts and Facebook interactions with each of your friends.
But what I found after using this amazingly capable smart phone is that I don’t need all these bells and whistles. When I’m traveling — whether it’s to a foreign country or down the road to the grocery store — all I really want is to have instant access to a phone and email. (Twitter is a distant third requirement.)
I don’t need the thousands of nifty applications available via the Android Market, even though there are some silly games that my young kids downloaded that kept them occupied on a recent road trip. There are hundreds of free apps in the “Travel” category, from hotel finders to NYC subway maps to English-Spanish dictionaries, but none are “must have” items for my phone. I’ve gotten along without them for years; I really don’t need them now.
And I really missed the button keyboard on my Blackberry. After three weeks of using a touch-screen keyboard–even with its “word prediction” and “spell correction” — I think I’m a much more accurate typist on my not-near-as-sleek Blackberry Tour.
Here are a few more observations — and I do recognize that it’s apples to oranges when I compare the DROID ERIS to my Blackberry, but, hey, it’s all I know.
The DROID ERIS is super-slim and attractive. I love how it feels in my hands. The home-screen graphics are crisp and clean and downright cute. (The little, green, droid alien guy appears when you power on and off and it’s on the Android Market widget.)
Set up is easy. I have always had my husband deal with calling our phone provider (Verizon Wireless) to set up new cell phones. But I insisted on doing this one, and it was painless. Syncing my Twitter, Facebook and Gmail accounts was a piece of cake with step-by-step visual cues.
You can personalize seven home screens. I fit all of my must-have widgets and contacts on one screen, but for users who are in constant contact with several friends, you can load their info in a easy-access widget and store it on one screen you might use for “play.” Store work contacts on your “work” screen. Put the kids’ favorite game apps on another screen. Put your web browser — if you use it frequently — on the other. You get my drift. You can really customize your phone the way you like to use it.
The Twitter application, Peep, failed a lot. As I mentioned above, I use my smartphone to make calls, check email and send Twitter updates. So it was a bummer when I often got fail messages. I also prefer Blackberry’s Ubertwitter to the Droid’s Peep. In Ubertwitter, you can scroll over (via the trackball) to a URL and it will take you to the site via the phone’s web browser; in Peep, you have to touch the screen “just right” to get a URL to work. I also never figured out how to search Twitter in Peep; in Ubertwitter it’s more obvious how to do that.
You have to charge the DROID ERIS nightly. I ran out of battery power if I was away from my home office most of the day and checking email frequently, or my kids were running down the battery playing games on the phone. I just don’t have that kind of battery drain with my Blackberry. On the DROID ERIS, the screen goes black to save battery power after mere seconds; annoying if you’re checking email a lot (like I do).
In the end, I really don’t think I’ll miss my sample DROID ERIS after I send it back to the manufacturer next week. I’m so glad I now understand what it’s like to use a touch-screen Droid phone with incredible social capabilities, but I’m fine with returning to what I think is a simpler phone, for my simple smartphone ways. My children, however, think differently — they’ll miss the Snake, Guitar Hero and Light Racer 3D game apps they’ve been playing for weeks.
The DROID ERIS is currently solely for Verizon Wireless customers. It’s $99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with new two-year customer agreement. Buy at Verizon Wireless stores or online.
Posted by Kara in General Gear on February 26th, 2010
Give Others a “Glympse” of Your Travels
Ever wish, on a long road trip, that your family could know where you are and when you’ll be home—without making phone calls along the way?
Or did you ever fly into a town, hop in a rent car and want to let someone know when you would arrive for a meeting?
Now, you can “share your where” with Glympse, a free app for GPS-equipped iPhones, Android, and Windows Mobile phones.
Glympse will send your location information over cell phone data channels and let you share it with anyone who has access to a desktop or laptop computer, or a mobile phone with a Web browser. Glympse will show your position on a map, along with travel speed and even an estimated arrival time, if you set a destination.
Testing the software on my AT&T Tilt2 smartphone, it worked amazingly well. The first step is opening the program and choosing who to share the information with and for how long. Then, Glympse will send them an e-mail or text message with a link to the company’s website. Whoever received the Glympse message does not need any special software or registration. The only thing required is a Web browser.
My travels showed there is a slight lag, about one block, from your actual location to the spot shown on the map. But that’s to be expected, since it does take a few seconds for the program to send the information and for it to update on Glympse’s servers. Still, it’s about as close to real-time as you can get.
The movement shown on the map is slightly jerky, not buttery smooth. But that’s understandable and the position updates are still very frequent.
I didn’t notice any huge battery hit when using the program on the phone. But it would be a good idea to hook up a charger if the program is running for a long time.
Glympse also addresses privacy and security issues. It’s not possible to “forget” you gave someone permission to view your whereabouts and thus allow them to track you 24×7. When you start the program, you choose who to allow to see your movements and then set a time limit, up to four hours. For longer trips, the time window can be easily extended.
The minimum age for using Glympse, under the company’s terms of service, is 14. It seems that would be difficult to enforce, though.
For many uses, Glympse is better than other location-sharing services such as Google Latitude. Latitude requires registration and a software download for everyone who uses it. But those who receive a Glympse invitation can track your travels just by following a web link, with no special software or log-in required.
If you’re using a Blackberry phone, help is on the way. The company plans to support Blackberry’s operating system in the next few months and is also working on versions for other popular phones.
There are many uses for Glympse—helping with busy business schedules, keeping up with friends and offering peace of mind to families. Just a decade ago, who would have ever imagined?
Posted by JohnG in Business Gear, General Gear, Kids and Family on January 26th, 2010
