The ChargeCard [Kickstarter Project]

So the other day I got my ChargeCard in the mail. Another one of the projects that I decided to back on kickstarter. The thing with kickstarter is sometimes, you begin to wonder when you'll get the product. Well, I finally have the product in hand, and I'm happy I supported the project. The ChargeCard is manufactured in Anaheim, CA (which is just about 10 miles away from place of residence) and it's always nice to support a local American manufacturing business. The reason I decided to get the ChargeCard is so that I'll be able to charge my phone virtually everywhere because I'll keep my ChargeCard in my wallet.

SoundHound - Android App Of The Week [Week-8]

You hear a song on the radio or maybe a song is playing while you're watching a show or movie and you don't know what to do. That's where SoundHound comes in. SoundHound is a great app for music fanatics. Hear a song you don't know, load up the app (or just have a widget on your homescreen) and it'll listen to what's playing and try and identify it. This is a competitor to the popular Shazam app. I prefer this one because I've had better luck with it and because it looks cleaner in my opinion.

           

The app is able to show the lyrics of the song that is playing and keep in sync with what lyrics are going on at the current time. It also has some nice sharing options and is easy to quickly youtube the song. It has some nice explore options so that you can find new music based on what's hot at the current time or what other people are discovering. The app comes in a free version and a paid version.

SoundHound

SoundHound ∞

Slickdeals - Android App Of The Week [Week-7]

Like buying stuff? Also like paying as little as possible and getting good deals? If you don't already look up deals on slickdeals.net now is the time to start doing so. There's a multitude of deals to be had and this site congregates deals from around the web or from in store locations. The app that goes with it is handy because you can look it up deals on the go and be notified of deals through notifications. That way you can get in on deals before they expire, run out of stock, or in some cases change a pricing because it was too good to last that long and was a mistake that the company honored for a little while.

The app is well made and allows you to quickly go into the app, check for good front page deals and move on with your day. It also allows you to look at the deals forum. The app stays inline with how modern Android apps look. It has a slide out navigation drawer and quite polished.

I recommend installing this app to help keep track of deals. There are some pretty good deals that show up online. Deals from electronics (got a great 24" tv for $100), clothes (jeans, shirts for a couple bucks), and everything in between. Check out the download bellow.

Forex Currency Rates

The HTC One and BlinkFeed

So I've had my HTC One since April 16th, so I've had a good amount of time to play around with the device  and know the device well enough to give my impression of it. What the device does well or doesn't do well is what I'll be sharing. So instead of clumping together everything into one post, I want to take the time to really get deep into the core of each aspect of the phone. I'll be starting with the areas HTC chose to highlight about the device: BlinkFeed, Design, Ultrapixel Camera, BoomSound, Sense 5, and the IRBlaster/Sense TV.

In the this post I'll go over BlinkFeed in all of it's eloquent glory and give my impressions of it. First off a youtube video where HTC showcases BlinkFeed just to give a quick idea of what BlinkFeed is in case you don't know yet.

The idea behind BlinkFeed is a good idea, and the design of it is crisp, smooth, and beautiful. The problem that I have with BlinkFeed is I like to sift through my information in a Google Reader approach. This means having the ability to mark stuff as already viewed, and to view EVERYTHING in chronological order. It does a really good job of almost being a replacement to Google Reader (and I need one fast since the service is closing soon. Why GOOGLE WHY!?!). I'm hoping that HTC stays committed to BlinkFeed since it has a lot going for it.

I love that if you tap on the notification bar it will bring you to the top of BlinkFeed. This also works in the app drawer of Sense 5. Pretty nifty feature. I wish though that I could get rid of the weather portion of BlinkFeed if I so chose to do so. Same way I would like the app drawer to be a little larger grid and to get rid of the permanent weather widget. The transfer animations are smooth though and despite some features missing that I would like. I find myself using BlinkFeed more than I anticipated.

BlinkFeed: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (8 of 10)

PushBullet - Android App Of The Week [Week-6]

So this week's app is for all those people out there that like to be more efficient. I showcased MightyText which gives users the ability to send texts from their computers or from their tablets. With this week's app, PushBullet, you can send links, notes, lists, or files to your device.


           

You download the chrome extension on your desktop/laptop (sorry firefox users out there, IE users...get a better browser) and you'll be able to start pushing things to your phone. Just sign into your devices. If you have Google's Chrome to Phone app you're probably thinking why do you need this app? Why is it better? The answer is simple, you can send more things (notes, lists, files) and you can send them to specific devices.
PushBullet comes in for the assist nicely for when you're browsing on your computer at home and you see a file you want to download on your phone or suppose you're about to head somewhere and you want to load up the directions that you have on your desktop, onto your phone. It's as simple as pushing a link.

                            

Hit up the download link bellow, it's an app well worth downloading. Plus, it's free!

PushBullet

Zedge - Android App Of The Week [Week-5]

If you're like me you probably like to change your wallpaper a million times a year, your ringtone everytime you hear some new hilarious audio clip, and your alarm clock notification sound just about everytime you set one. Doing that can become quite combursom if you have to manually find an image or audio and transfer it to your device or download it. Then it becomes a hassle of just organizing all the accumulated  media. Instead of doing all that, just download Zedge. Even if you don't like doing all that and don't download or change your wallpapers or ringtone sounds often. Still just download Zedge. The Zedge app connects into their website where anyone with a free account can upload ringtones and wallpapers to the site and then easily download it from the Android app. It's really handy. You don't have to worry about where you had that awesome ringtone located and you can favorite ringtones and wallpapers that you come across.

 

That app knows what resolution screen you have so that you can find wallpapers that will look nice and crisp for what ever screen size you have. The gorgeous 1080p screen on my HTC One displays the wallpapers that it gets from the app beautifully. All the wallpapers that it gets on this phone are made for 1080p screens. If I fire the app up on my HTC One S (540p screen) it'll have wallpapers available to download in a 540p resolution that will look nice for that device. One downside to the app however is that you won't find almost all popular copyright material. So if you want to download a ringtone that is a clip of a song - you're out of luck. You'll have to get that ringtone elsewhere. Likewise if you want to upload a ringtone or wallpaper, if it's copyrighted there's a good chance it will be taken down quickly by their automated anti-copyright system. If the system doesn't catch it, there's a good chance it will eventually be reported and taken down. Despite that, there's A LOT of good stuff on Zedge. I recommend Zedge as a must have app on every Android phone.

ZEDGE™