Thuuz is a must app for any sports fan - Android app review



Not long ago, I blogged about an app that claimed that you could Make Money to Download Apps. Frankly, most of the apps that I downloaded to make a few bucks weren't kept any longer than I needed to to collect the 17 cents or whatever. But, as was probably the whole point behind this marketing method of paying people to download apps, I did run across a couple that were keepers.

One of them was Thuuz, a sports app which sends you updates on your selected sports and notifies you when there are really good games going on. They also rate the games on a 0-100 scale and tell you where you can watch the game live if you're so inclined.

I'm not a sports fanatic by any means, but if I'm going to watch a game that doesn't involve one of my home teams, it damn well better be a really good game.

So, after downloading Thuuz as part of the get paid to download apps program, I took a few minutes to enter my faves and must admit that I enjoy the ocassional notifications of great games in progress.

The app is available in the Android Market and has about a 4.5 star rating, or check out their web site at http://www.thuuz.com/.



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Google Currents App Review - news reader better than Pulse?

I discovered the Google Currents news reader application for Android while browsing the Technology area of another news reader app, Pulse.

Because I was using Pulse, it's obvious that I like it. It's a really easy to navigate interface that categorizes your personal news and information preferences. Sometimes I'm in the mood for technology, other times I'm in the mood for stupid entertainment gossip. Pulse provides this very nicely. Read more about Pulse here.

So, I was thrilled to see that I may now have a cool alternative. And one created by Google to boot.

The good news is: it's not bad. The bad news is: it's not great.

For me, the attraction of Pulse is that there are a lot of options on the screen, and you can scroll through a number of articles, from a variety of publications conveniently from each screen.

On Google Currents, you choose from the Library listing, which has a scrolling list of the individual publications that you added to your personalized preferences; or you click on Trending which provides all of the hot stories of the moment.

So, let's say you click on a story about Gabby Gifford leading the pledge of allegiance, it still takes another couple of screens to get to the story you want. Then, once at the story you selected, you can continue to swipe sideways (a feature I like much better scrolling up) to continue reading, and if you swipe again it will take you to another article about the same subject. I like this feature when I'm in the mood to read a lot about a particular story, or if you want to get more than one perspective on a particular topic.

Google Currents ends each article with a few Suggested Articles, another feature that fits nicely in my life when I'm in the mood to explore the article's subject more.

Both applications load the articles in their own "reader" format which is definitely more aesthetically pleasing than an RSS feed. And both apps also offer you the ability to jump over to the original article in your preferred Android browser. One thing that seemed a bit odd to me was that if you load the Original Article (into the Currents interface, not on the web), you now need to scroll down, as opposed to the page-turning scrolling on the original article.

My recommendation: download both apps and decide for yourself. If you're a news and info junkie you'll probably be like me and use each one depending on your mood and appetite.

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Groupon stock sinks below initial offering - What? No more cheap facials?

Even though I delete 99% of all of the offers I receive form Groupon, Living Social and Moolala, as a consumer I find that the ocassional opportunity to save a bunch of money very appealing and, in this economy, necessary. But, it comes as no surprise that Groupon's (GRPN) advertisers are dropping like flies and their stock has dipped below it's initial offering.

[NOTE: Both Groupon and Living Social have Android apps available in the Android Market. Click on the links above to set up your free account, then download the apps.]

Over the past year I have had a few conversations with advertisers (mostly restaurants) who are using these daily deals programs to get the word out about their food, products or services and every one of them bitched that it was costing them too much money to get customers to come in once for the amazing discount and probably never come back again.

With restaurants, the whole purpose, from an advertising standpoint, is to get customers to try their fare, and if they love it they'll come back. Reality check: they're not coming back because they're down the street at the competitor's place eating their cheap Groupon food deal.

Groupon's stock has now dipped below its initial IPO opening price. And studies show that advertisers aren't re-upping with Groupon because they feel that they are paying a premium to get the customer to come in, but they never come back. It just isn't a good advertising/marketing move.

It seems that if these daily deal programs want to survive, they're going to have to make it more appealing to advertisiers (ie: cheaper), while still offering great products and services to the consumer.

In the meantime, grab those deals while you can.

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IRIS - the Android app alternative to SIRI doesn't seem to fill the void

A few days ago, the Android Market offered an app called the "Official" SIRI for Android. It wasn't. And because Google stays on top of monitoring their open market, they were able to remove it from the Market in very short order. Kudos to Google. I'd still much rather have an open market which sometimes needs to be tweaked than not.

But, this review is not of the app which was removed from the Market, but of an app that was created by a group of developers in only eight hours a few months back, cleverly(?) called IRIS (SIRI backwards).

First, let me say that the fact that the developers created this interactive voice personal assistant app to compete with the iPhone's SIRI in a mere eight hours (or so the instant-legend claims), is an incredible accomplishment. Ultimately though, for me it was only a fun novelty for a short while before I decided that as far as personal assistant apps go for the Android, I much prefer using Vlingo.

It sounded intriguing to have an app for Android that would verbally respond to your requests, so i downloaded and loaded the free IRIS app (there are a number of other SIRI clones as well). After I was done asking the usual array of stupid questions like, "Are you a man or woman?"; "Are you married?"; "Are you better than Siri?"; I moved on to informational things such as, "What will the weather be like tomorrow?"; "How far is it to the Moon?"; "Where is Madagascar?" She (I confirmed that) did okay. Just okay.

For instance, I asked IRIS, "How many U.S. dollars are there in a British pound?" The reply, although accurate, was far more confusing than the question. IRIS returned the calculation for a number that she just pulled  out of her cyber-butt  and returned with a reply which told me how many GBP you would have if you had 7,200,000 U.S. dollars. (This ocurred after the Cha Cha integration-see Comments.) Often, I found that you had to continually rephrase questions until you finally got the answer you were looking for.

Then, I moved on to trying more productive things like asking IRIS to open apps and text people for me. She couldn't do either.

One of the features of Vlingo that I love and use often is for texting. You can open Vlingo and speak: "Text Joe I'm on my way period do you want me to bring anything question mark" and it gets it right 95% of the time. Another useful feature of Vlingo which comes in quite handy is when you want to open an app that you don't use all that often, and you don't want to scroll through all of your apps to find it, you simply say, "Open stopwatch" and Voila! it opens right up.

As a novelty, IRIS is rather fun, but not nearly as useful a tool as I had hoped. I won't uninstall though, because when those smug, iPhone users are showing off SIRI, I can at least open IRIS and ask a loaded question that I know the bitch has the right answer to. :)

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The top three Android productivity apps of 2011

Let me first begin by saying that I don't even know if these apps came out in 2011. Maybe they came out before that. But, I found them and loaded them and used them in 2011...so I'm calling them 2011 apps. So there.

What criteria did I use to determine the top three? I used the following complex formula:

1) I thought: what are the three productivity apps I like best?
2) The first three that popped into my head won.

Research complete:

Pulse News App

If you're looking for a great source for news and information, you'll love Pulse. Easy to navigate, lots of content, many categories (top news, technology, fashion, entertainment) and my favorite feature, when you want to read the entire story from the web, it loads right into the Pulse interface, rather than making you open a browser to go to the web. Read my entire review here.


Vlingo Personal Assistant 

This app is incredibly useful and they keep making it better and more responsive to voice commands. I use it for hands free texting (just say "text Joe followed by the message" and it does it all), I use it to make calls ("call Jim on mobile") and I use it to open other apps rather than having to search for them ("open stopwatch") Read more here...

Square Credit Card Processing App

I still think this is revolutionary, even though the competition is getting thick (review of Intuit coming soon). Imagine being able to accept a credit card, swipe it into your Smartphone, and have the money deposited into your bank account and the receipt sent to the buyers email, text or you can print it out for them. All with no monthly fee. Only pay when you process a sale. Too cool. Read all about it here...

So, there you have it. If you don't already have these apps, download them now. They are all free, fun and/or useful.

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Get paid to download apps on your Android device. Really? Yup!

Some of you may be familiar with my other blog Slow Online Wealth, where I realistically examine methods to earn money online. Many of which I am involved with on a daily basis. I am a major proponent of diversification. If you can make $150 on Google Adsense ads per month, $50 from your Amazon affiliate account, $80 selling your own products or services, etc., before you know it, you've got a nice little chunk of change added to your bank account.

Well, here's a way to make some extra money that will definately NOT make you rich. But, it will add a little dough to your PayPal account on a daily basis.

All you need to do, on your Android device, is download an app in the Android Market called Make Money with Downloads. Within this app you will be able to view a variety of other apps, videos, offers, etc. and for every one you download or participate in, you'll get "points." These points are then redeemable for cash, which you can have transferred to your PayPal account.

As I said, you won't get rich with this, but I did test it by downloading enough apps to reach the $1.00 minimum plateau for transferring to PayPal and it worked as promised. To make things even a little better, there were a few apps there that I've been meaning to download anyway (like Intuit, which is a similar program to the Square credit card processing app) and Zarly (an app that lists things for sale in your area).

How many points you get for the download varies from app to app. You might only get 16 points, or as many as 900. Each point is equal to about half a penny, so once you acquire 200 points, you can transfer $1.00 to your PayPal account.

Some apps apply the points just for downloading and opening the app, others require you to get past the first level, or return to the app on the second day before you collect your points. Some require you to actually buy something (flowers, gifts, etc.) or register (dating sites, insurance quotes).

I'm not sure how long this will stick around, but in the last couple of days, just playing with it in my spare time, I have earned over three bucks. Hey, sometimes I don't make that much from my Google Adsense account.

Obviously, the developers who offer their apps find it worth a few pennies to get people to download their apps (mostly games, some productivity), in the hopes that they won't uninstall it, and maybe, just maybe click on one of the ads within their app.

So far, I have downloaded a couple dozen apps through this program, and even kept a couple that I liked.

If you want to try it and have the money you earn sent to my PayPal account, the address to use is gary@metroweblinks.com. :)

Hey, is that so much to ask for all of this great info I share with you? Okay, maybe it is.

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Review of JuiceDefender - battery saver app. Does it really work?

If you've read previous posts, you know that I'm currently using the HTC Thunderbolt 4G Android device. You can read some the pros and cons here. One of the main cons of the TBolt was how quickly the battery drains when the phone is set to 4G. I quickly learned some things I could do to preserve battery life, including figuring out how to switch from 4G to 3G because HTC forgot to include a toggle in the Thunderbolt.

So, most of the time I have my phone in 3G mode and for the most part it works amazingly well. I switch on 4G only when I want to watch streaming video or for downloading apps and programs.

But, as with any Smartphone, if you want to stay really connected you have to deal with the issue of much shorter battery life. Sure, you can purchase an extended-life battery, but most of them are manufactured by after-market companies and the bulk of the reviews I've read is that they don't perform much, if any, better than the OEM shorter-life batteries.

Enter the JuiceDefender app. This free Android app (with pay versions if you're so inclined) claims to dramatically extend your smartphone battery life by managing your mobile date, wi-fi and CPU speed.

It's very easy to set up in the default mode. Just follow these simple instructions:

1) Download app
2) Enable

That's it.

Now, the standard settings recommended by JuiceDefender Battery Saver will control your battery life and give you noticably extended periods between charging. Or so they claim.

Does it work? From my experience, absolutely. The biggest thing that I can see that it does (because I already make sure my GPS, Bluetooth, etc. is off unless I need it), is it disconnects you from the 3G or 4G network when you put it in standby mode, periodically connecting to grab anything that may be out there looking for you. When you take your phone out of standby it automatically reconnects you to the network and you move on with your cyber life. From the app's onboard calculation I'm getting almost twice the battery life than before. From my perception, that seems about right.

My only complaint so far, is that when your phone is idle and then you grab it and power it out of standby, it sometimes (usually it's quick and seamless) takes a little while for it to reconnect to the 3G or 4G network. Usually it reconnects in two to five seconds, but I have had a couple of incidents where it took well over a minute to reconnect in an area that has excellent coverage.

That being said, would I recommend this app? Yes. Even if you have to wait a minute or two to connect to the network, it's a much shorter time than if you discover that your battery went dead.

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