Unified Remote - Android App Of The Week [Week-11]

Today's App is for remotely controlling every aspect of your desktop/laptop computer via your phone! This comes in handy for when you're using your computer to present a Power Point presentation, watch a movie with VLC, or just can't be right there at your computer. To set up the app is easy. Just download the client app on your phone and install the server app on your computer. You can connect via WiFi or via Bluetooth.

                 


There's a lot of things that you can do with the Unified Remote. You can open up files, kill processes, control the computer via a mouse or keyboard, and you can do even more with the paid version. I have been using this app for the past 3 weeks since I use my laptop as my primary source of media playback through my tv. I hook my laptop up to my TV and then play videos through my laptop. With the Unified Remote, I can then pause, play, load files, increase the volume, etc all without having to get up off the couch. I just have to have my phone with me!

Unified Remote

Unified Remote Full

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Flickr - Android App Of The Week [Week-10]

Flickr has recently released some pretty hefty changes to their services. Something that no other image hosting service has done. They are allowing you to upload 1 terabytes of images to the cloud. While other services measure in gigabytes, they're measuring in terabytes. We're talking about being able to store over 200,000 3 MB images. They use to offer the ability for you to go back to view the most recent 200 images and to upload 300 MB worth of images each month. Now you can go back and view ALL your photos, and upload as much as you want so long as you stay within the 1 terabyte. You could embed images into blogs and you don't have to worry about bandwidth issues. Flickr is where I have been storing all my blog images for this blog. Best of all, it's been free for me.

The UI update that the flickr app got makes it in line with the looks of a modern android app. Featuring a slide out navigation drawer and other little attentions to detail, the attention to detail is a welcome addition to the flickr world. The website even got a makeover too! 

 

I highly do recommend using flickr for image storing needs as it's a very effective way to store all those personal memories and it comes with the added bonus of being able to host the images to share via blogs and websites. Flickr has really done a great job with their changes and I expect for them to be competitive again. Download the app and enjoy a terabyte of storage for all your pics!

Flickr

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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 ∞

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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

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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

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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™

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SeriesGuide - Android App Of The Week [Week-4]

Today's App is for those of you that follow a bunch of different TV shows and need a way to not only keep track of what episodes you have watched from what shows but also to keep track of when the newest episode will air next. SeriesGuide is the app that comes in for the assist. The app connects to the internet to add shows to your following list. From there it will be able to keep track of every episode you have watched and when the next episode will air. It keeps track of it in Pacific Standard time so if you live in a different time zone you will have to go into the settings and adjust the time it will display.

          
With the paid app of SeriesGuide known as SeriesGuide X you have more widget options for your home screen and it gives the ability to have notification on your phone for when a new episode is about to air.

So if you get tired of checking online through imdb or some other place to see if the next episode of "How I Met Your Mother" airs in one week or in three because they're taking a break on new episode, this app is for you. On a single page you can check the showtimes all at once of your series that you follow. Check out the links bellow and give the app a go!

SeriesGuide

SeriesGuide X

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MightyText - Android App Of The Week [Week-2]

Now there are some apps that people use daily, and for me this is one such app. MightyText is godsend to those of us that like texting but would love to do so from the comfort of a computer (or tablet). Setup is insanly easy and the usefulness of this app makes MightyText a must download app for your Android phone.

After installing the app all you have to do is go through the quick little setup on the app to log in with your Google account and your phone is setup. Then when you go to their website and log in you will be able to send and recieve SMS/MMS from your computer. It does it all from the same phone number. How it works is when you receive a message on your phone, MightyText sends it to their servers and then you can access it online from the website. Want to send a text back to someone or any number? Just compose the message and send it. It'll send it to their servers, to your phone, and then from your phone to who you want to get the message. It's more complicated than that, but all you need to know is that it is well worth checking out.

SMS Text Messaging ↔PC Texting

Text from Tablet-SMS Messaging

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Lapse It Pro - Android App Of The Week [Week-1]

So today begins my commitment to finding and blogging about Android apps that I find useful or entertaining.
Games or productivity apps that are free or paid will all be part of it. So today lets start with a new little gem I found in preparation for doing a review of the brand new HTC One.

I was in search of a method to record the phone (once I get it, I can't wait!) playing a video until the battery gives out. This will be a method of doing one aspect of a battery test. The problem I came into was most video recording had a limit due to the limitation of the file system FAT32, which has a limit of 4GB. That is where lapse it comes into play.

Lapse It Pro

Lapse It is an award-winning full featured app for capturing amazing time lapse clips with your Android camera, simple, fast and intuitive. What lapse it does is take a picture at a set amount of time and does so until you stop it. After that the app allows merging those images with a set amount of frames per second into a video file. You can select the resolution to captures in (the free version is limited to 240p but the paid can take advantage of the full sensor), brightness level of the screen after the recording starts (useful for conserving battery), disable shutter sound, scheduling, scene modes, and focus modes.






Go ahead and give the app a spin in the free or paid versions.

Lapse It • Time Lapse • Lite

Lapse It • Time Lapse • Pro

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