Monday, March 26, 2012

Drunken Pee app review - absurd, fun, funny and challenging Android game

I'm nothing if not one of those responsible for bringing you reviews of incredibly useful productivity apps. Great apps such as Vlingo, Box and Plan B are truly amazing and enhance your personal and business life by giving you a virtual assistant, a place in the cloud to store all your stuff, and a great free way to locate your lost phone. But sometimes, I just want to share some of the downright stupid apps that were created just for fun.

Which brings me to my new favorite game: Drunken Pee. The object is simple: in varying degrees of intoxication you must attempt to aim your urine into the toilet bowl and avoid peeing on the floor. As time goes on, you are required to drink more (virtual alcohol) and then get back to pointing your pisser at the toilet bowl.

I love when app developers come up with things that are either really useful, really entertaining, or just downright silly. This is definitely all three (assuming that you find it useful to learn how to better urinate when inebriated.

My first few scores weren't that good. Probably because I was laughing so hard while trying to play. For some juvenile reason this app is REALLY funny. But what makes me highly recommend it isn't because of its silliness, but because it's a truly challenging game and a great time killer.

A friend of mine told me that he thought the game was so funny that he almost peed his pants. But that would defeat the whole purpose, wouldn't it?
READ MORE - Drunken Pee app review - absurd, fun, funny and challenging Android game

Friday, March 16, 2012

NCAA Tournament March Madness app review - using newspaper and pencil much easier

I have four different brackets for the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament. That's not a lot, but it can keep you busy trying to follow all the games the old fashioned way by printing out your bracket and circling the winners. Surely Android must have a nice simple way to fill in your brackets and keep them updated for you, so I'll have more time to find other things to waste my time with.

So let's go find one.

First stop (from initial Google search) is NCAA March Madness Live for Android, the Official issue from Turner Sports Interactive, Inc. I just downloaded it, even though the average rating is 1.8.

If the OFFICIAL app sucks, I hold out little hope.

8: 10 a.m. Okay, got it. Now, let's check it out together.

Today is the Friday (March 16th) after the first full day of tournament play. I have four brackets on the desk in front of me. Can this app help me keep track of things?

8:11 a.m. Open app and check it out. First thing, I clicked the Bracket button. Why? I don't know. Because I want to see if I can load my own bracket picks.

Okay, that shows me a bunch of blank spaces for the second round and no discernible way to fill them in.

Oh wait, there's a button for My Bracket. Clicked on it: FORCE CLOSE.

Okay, sucking pretty bad on my Thunderbolt.

After restarting, it asks me for my login and password. I don't have one. Hmmm. And I don't see anywhere on this screen to register. Okay, close that window.

Oh, goodie. Some scores on the screen. Okay, at least I can see all the games and final scores by scrolling one screen. But, since I don't want to spend much more time, the easiest thing is to just pull out my print-outs and do the circling thing. Not a big advantage over doing it online, but more mobile.

8:22 a.m. Okay, rather than go through all of the games right now, I'll explore a little more. I clicked on the My Bracket link and was taken to a website which stated that the site was closed for new registrations, but I could log into my CBS Sports account by visiting the CBS website and logging in. Fortunately, two of my brackets are with CBS Sports.

8:24 a.m. Heading to CBSSports.com on my Android. Okay, right there, on the front page of the regular, old CBS Sports home page are all the scores from last night. So far, I don't need their app for anything. But maybe if I can make CBSSports.com talk to the app and let it know about my picks and keep me updated, that will be good.

8:29 a.m. Okay, really annoying bracket interface and I see nowhere that I can sign in to see my own brackets.

8:30 a.m. Giving up and move on to something else. I'll probably use the app to update my paper brackets, but this March Madness Android app was unable to grab my attention and smoothly guiding me through set-up and features.

Not a fan.

I'm thinking 1.8 is being generous.
READ MORE - NCAA Tournament March Madness app review - using newspaper and pencil much easier

Monday, March 12, 2012

Instagram is coming to Android and I don't care. Box cloud storage is a must have app.

Instagram coming to Android. Big whoop why?

The big announcement that the iPhone app of the year is soon to be available for Android Smartphone users. Somehow, I'm missing the excitement of this.

I visited the Instagram web site and their home page offers the following information:

Meet Instagram.
It’s a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures.
Snap a photo with your iPhone, choose a filter to transform the look and feel, send to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr – it’s all as easy as pie. It’s photo sharing, reinvented.
Oh yeah, did we mention it’s free?

There has to be more to this that meets the eye but their website doesn't offer it up. Nothing in that introduction gives me anything more than what I'm already doing. Android already has lots of really cool apps to edit and transform photos, and sharing them on Twitter or Facebook is also just a click or two away. Seriously, am I missing something?

Box app cloud storage app not improves and simplifies.

Free cloud storage: good. Very good.

If you have an active online life (computer, smartphone, photography, social networking), then you hopefully know how important it is to back up all your stuff. Awful things can happen. Your hard drive fries; you lose your SD card; your Smartphone gets stolen; some idiot with a crappy TV show in Las Vegas mistakenly reports you to Google and YouTube for stealing their video content when in fact the content was yours to begin with and they were essentially using it with your permission but Google didn't question the dufus ass and cancels your associated accounts (Google and YouTube) making all of your emails and videos inaccessible forever. Do I sound bitter about that last one? :)

The point is, you don't want to lose your history because, at some time in the future, you may want to revisit a lot of that stuff.

A few years ago I sort of  created my own cloud-like universe with the help of Gmail. Since they give you so much free space on a standard account (currenly more than 8 gig if I'm not mistaken), I just started emailing all of my digital stuff to myself which I could then access from anywhere that had Internet access. That works very well unless it's actually Gmail who shuts down your account, then you're screwed.

Flash drives became very helpful in my back-up life, but now my backpack has about 15 or 20 of them (2 gig to 16 gig) stuffed in a pocket and there really isn't any way to identify what's on them until you plug them in and look. Annoying!

Then, I discovered A-Drive, a free online storage, cloud site which give you 50 gig of space for free. I love it, and sometimes actually remember to upload to it.

Enter Box. Box is an online and Smartphone app which allows you to access your cloud from your desktop, laptop and Android device (or Blackberry and iPhone). They also give you 50 gig.

What makes using Box over ADrive (or many of the cloud storage sites) better is convenience. The app that you download on your device (iPhone or Android) makes it easy to upload on the fly, and if you want to do multiple files at once, you just log into your account on your desktop/laptop and upload away.

With Box you can also allow access to others and they can download and add to your folder.

A feature that I love is about the mobile app is that you can upload multiple files to your Box cloud at once. Here's how you do it: Open the folder which contains the files you want to upload (pics, music, docs, whatever). Then click on the Menu and select Share. Choose Box (download the app first, of course) and then check off the boxes you want to upload.

I'm sure there are many other applications for this application. I'll have to start thinking outside the Box.
READ MORE - Instagram is coming to Android and I don't care. Box cloud storage is a must have app.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

App Development Tips & Tricks

Here's a few tips and tricks in developing Android apps using Eclipse.

1. Don't try to run a project while you've got an XML file open and active - Eclipse will create an *.out.xml file and fail to run. Delete the out.xml, close (or make inactive) the XML file you had open, then run the project again.

2. Eclipse usually rebuilds a project when you edit any aspect of it. but it will only recreate the apk file when you run it in the emulator (or on an attached device). If you want the recreate the apk without having to run (as I do sometimes when I've made minor changes and I just want to update the apk) there's an option in Eclipse for that: in Eclipse --> Preference, search for Build. You'll see Android-->Build, and uncheck the Skip Pacakging... option.

3. If you don't use a version/source control system, you can revert to a previous version of code by using the Local History option. Right-click a file within a project and choose Replace With --> Local History and browse for the file. Otherwise install something like Subversion.
READ MORE - App Development Tips & Tricks
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