Posts Tagged ‘iPhone’
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Pebble Smartwatch: We want one!
Have you ever wanted to be able to control everything on your smartphone from your watch? I have. I may not wear a watch often, but I think I can chalk that excuse up to not being able to do what Pebble does. Can your watch:
- Sync with your iPhone or Android?
- Have an e-paper display that displays perfectly inside and outside?
- Work as a GPS meter?
- Work a pedometer?
- Show you your text messages?
- Control your music applications?
Pebble can? At least, it will once it’s made. They are currently on Kickstarter looking for a few bucks to help make the product. This will be amazing, and will even feature an open SDK (so anybody can make apps for it). If you can spare it, putting some money into this project is my suggestion. I just hope that for us cheap people out there, it will be a good price when it comes out.
What do you think, is this something you’d be interested in getting? And how much would you pay a watch like this? Let me know in the comments below.
[Via Android and Me]
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Personal Assistant: Makes good coffee [App]
Sorry to lie, this app doesn’t actually make you coffee. It does do everything else a good assistant does though. Today I’m talking about Pageonce‘s cross-platform Personal Assistant application.
Personal Assistant allows you to access your bank accounts, credit cards, bills, shopping wishlists, social networking sites,e-mail, travel schedule (and more!) through your one application.I use mine currently for my checking account and credit card, as well as my internet and phone bills. For bank accounts, it shows your your balance and all your transactions. For credit cards, you can see your spending limit, how much of it you’ve used, your minimum needed payment as well as when that is due.
My Internet bill shows when it is due and how much. My monthly phone bill shows me when my payment is due, how much it’s for; as well as how many minutes, text and data I’ve used this month. My prepaid phone just shows the balance remaining and when it expires.
PageOnce also has an transactions section, which lets you see changes and updates at a glance. This is a nice thing to check daily, just to make sure nothing happened during the day that you didn’t authorize. Personal Assistant also monitors your bills for you, and send you out an e-mail a few days in advance as a ‘change that might interest you’. This serves a great purpose when you get an e-mail letting you know that your bill is due in 5 days, there is more chance of remembering to pay it.Did I mention this is free? Well it is. There is a premium version which offers unlimited accounts (I believe free is 10) and they are working on allowing multiple updates daily as well. I’m tempted to buy the premium version just to support the developer because I love how simple and affective it is. Having all of my finances (or lack there of) right at my finger tips at all times makes me almost feel like an adult! Come to think of it, not so sure I like that.
- Pros:
- Free
- Has all the services I need
- Great interface
- Easy to set up
- Can Be Improved:
- Would like to see a widget
- Only updates once a day with the free version
Personal Assistant is available on all major mobile systems: Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and iPhone.
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Urban Spoon [App]
On today’s menu, we’re featuring a lovely Urban Spoon with a side dish of multi-device support topped with a light glaze of amusement. It’s like Shake n Bake, without the Baking.
Instead of arguing about what to have for dinner, why not leave it to chance? Urban spoon provides you with a fun roulette that will tell you quick where, what and how much you’re going to pay to eat with just one quick wrist gesture. You pick the location, then give your phone a slight shake and it will randomly pick what kind of food you’re eating tonight and find a restaurant in that category. The price option is a big help too so you don’t end up buying a $70 steak with rent money (Which is awesome if you’re totally broke like me). When it finds the restaurant, it gives you info on where it is, the phone number, if it has delivery, and often some reviews.My city currently only has 140 restaurants, which leave a TON of room for improvement. Given how many placed to eat there are around here, this app has almost inspired me to actually travel around my town to new places I haven’t been to before just so I can add some more restaurant onto the list. I’d advise you to do the same, it’s not only a good way to contribute, but this can prove to be a good marketing platform for local businesses.
Urban Spoon is available through their website or mobile site if you just want to do some browsing. You can get Urban Spoon’s addictive little app on Android (2.0+), iPhone, or Blackberry.
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Gowalla & Foursquare: LBS smackdown [Apps]
Everybody loves doing something else while doing something boring. At least I do. Lately, this is where Location Based Services (LBS) are filling my void. My current loves are Gowalla and Foursquare.
Both of these services allow you to travel around town, and using your GPS you can ‘check in’ where ever you are. I honestly can not figure out why it’s so cool, since nobody actually is looking up where I am, but it’s fun to think that somebody can.
What intrigues me is that it’s been made into a game in a few different ways. For instance, checking in at the mall, then the coffee place, then at work; I will get 3 points for having 3 check-ins plus a bonus if it is the first time checking in to that location. You can also get ‘badges’ for accomplishing various tasks or at random. They don’t do anything, but you can show them off to your friends.
An added feature is ‘mayorships’. If you’ve checked into a certain place more than anybody else, you become the mayor. In this sense, when somebody else checks in to that place, they see that you’re the mayor. You can also see how many people have been at each place, and who is there now.
What is putting Gowalla above Foursquare in my mind right now is graphics and items. Foursquare is mainly text, where as Gowalla has nice pictures beside it and actually requires you to be within range of the location to check in. Once checked in on Gowalla, you can also pick up items (if there are anythere) or drop an item. When you take one, you need to drop one. The next person that checks in, can then choose to take your dropped item if they want. It’s a fun way to feel connected to those who you don’t know, as it shows the history of an item when you look at it.
I would love to see these become more popular, and it seems to be here in Kingston. I’d love to see 3 of my coworkers checked in at work, to feel connected in suffering. I’m just waiting for a beta invite to Check.In, where I can check-in on both applications at the same time.Gowalla is available on Android, iPhone, Palm OS (I’m shocked too) and mobile site for those out of the loops.
Foursquare is available for Android, Iphone and blackberry.Do you use LBS? If so, what ones do you like using, or why not?
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Hoccer [App]
Today’s awesome app is named Hoccer. It is available for both Android devices, as well as iPhones, and may be the coolest program of all time.
Doesn’t having to transfer stuff to people suck? I hate having to e-mail something just to attach a picture, or share a song. This is where Hoccer jumps in. With Hoccer, you just need two phones somewhere around each other within 100 feet and you can actually drag it off your phone, on to their phone or throw it through the air. Easy as that, no kidding.
Hoccer uses location based file sharing. In short: You throw it, server catches it. When somebody that is in the same area as you tries to catch it, the server checks recent throws. Theoretically, this means that multiple people can catch one throw if they time it right. That I’d love to see.
A buddy of mine (also using android) and I did this on the bus. We had some issues with actual ‘hoccing’ (it could be because we were on a moving bus at the time) but ‘sweeping’ worked easily enough and he got the .apk file no problem.
I’m going to have to keep playing around with this when I have free time, I would love to throw files around all willy-nilly. Not sure how often I’d use this, but god damn if it isn’t totally bad ass to show off.
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Feeds, Feeds, Everywhere a Feed
I should slow down on these RSS feeds, makes them last a little bit longer. It would be easier though if there was something worth reading in them. Nearly single one of my feeds right now are consisting of iPhone crap. Yes, the iphone might be great but I don’t care. Why?
- MY phone does everything I need it to, including email and blogging.
- Rogers (the only company here that can use the iphone) sucks
- The ‘cool kids’ that have an iphone are $200 poorer and I don’t have $200.
Good reasons? I thought so.
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