Tag Archive: features


New topics

Filed Under: My thoughts by dr3amcast3r — Leave a comment
November 11, 2015

New home, new topics to explore!

With the moving to a new home, it’s time to expand the topics of this blog.

While this site was hosted on WorPpress free hosting service, I limited myself on expanding the topics of the blog. I’ve always tried to keep it centred on technology reviews and my own considerations on technology advancement, and never really expanded it beyond that.

But technology advanced so much since I started the blog and I now feel the need to expanded on several topics. These topics will have a link to technology, internet services, applications and games for Personal Computers and/or smartphones, but also things that the internet evolution now allows.

Here’s a brief list of the topics that I plan to implement in the near future

  • E-books Self-publishing;
  • Indie musicians and their work;
  • E-learning and e-learning platforms;

Regarding the e-learning, I’ve been studying some courses on several topics, especially on web-development on Udemy and on Stacksill. as a result, I’ve also started a “company” so to speak.

Dreamcaster Studio is officially the place where all the stuff that I’ll create will be put. My plans for future creations include:

  • Two separate books, one in a fantasy setting and another on a scientific fiction setting;
  • An RPG system that will take place on the worlds where the books also take place;
  • A companion application for this site and for Dreamcaster Studio for Android;
  • All the graphics designs that I’ll be making for the books;
  • Eventually a couple of games for Android and Windows.

I’ll also use this site to promote most of my affiliate market stuff as well as my fiverr profile.

Show stay tuned for more updates.

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AppSales – Android Application

Filed Under: android, Smartphones by dr3amcast3r — Leave a comment
November 19, 2013

Going back to the origins of this blog, today I’m doing a review off one of the biggest money savers in the Google Play.

Ever since the launch of the paid applications in the Google Play there have been apps going on sale. This is always great, specially if that application that you’ve meaning to buy goes on sale. But this type of promotions is completly pointless with the current state of the Google Play. You can’t organize the results of a search by price or check which prices have dropped in the last 24hours. And if you, by random chance, happen to find an app that went on sale, there’s no way to know the amount of the discount. This is a problem, specially for developers that wish to get reach a bigger audience by doing this type of promotion.

This is where AppSales comes in. The application allows you to check which apps went on sale on the past few weeks (that’s right, weeks). In the main screen they show all the apps that went on sale over the last 2 weeks (default as far as I can tell), as well as for which apps the promotion has expire. When you select an app, the program shows a screen where there’s a lot of interesting and useful information about the app in question.
You’ll have some screenshots of the application, it’s price in dollars, the option to add it to your watch list, share it over the web (by mail, social apps, etc). It will also gives you a brief description of the application and  a graphic that shows the price evolution of the app on the last 3 months. There are other functions, but these are, in my opinion, the more useful and important.

About the general settings of the application, one comes out as extremely useful. You can login with your g+ profile (and you’ll have one since you’re using a google device). This option allows you to sync the watch list through multiple devices, like in my case, between my nexus s and my tf101.

Another very useful option is the ability to, indirectly, add apps from the Google Play to AppSales Watch list. This is done by simply going to Google Play, select the application you want to watch and click the share button. You’ll will see a selection of sharing apps, including AppSales. Select it and you’ll see a screen with a bunch of information about the app, including the eye to add it to your Watchlist.

I highly recommend the app to everyone that owns an Android Device and wish to save some money on paid apps. For me, it saved more that 50€.

Enjoy

google payappsales qrcode

 

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The Portable Manifest

Filed Under: My thoughts, Personal Computer, Uncategorized by dr3amcast3r — Leave a comment
October 3, 2010

After a few month of inactivity, I’m back with some comments on Portable stuff (in terms of technology, of course).

In the last few weeks portals like Android and Me and Engadget (If anyone knows others please share them with us) have been releasing a lot of news about tablets, android based for the most part. While I really think this is quite good, it’s also quite frustrating and limited.

For two years I’ve been a user of portable applications and games. Back in the beginning of 2008  I received my first U3 pen with 16 GB and another one, a DATAFERRY with 16GB. After a few months using, and loving, U3 I got tired off all the good applications where payed, and not that cheap most of them, so I changed to Portableapps.com, a free and opensource platform to take your applications with you. For instance, this post is being written on the portableapps version of Firefox.

Thanks to the possibility of taking all of my favorite applications with me, and having an Asus EEE 901 (20GB SDD) to tag along, I end up realizing that there’s a huge flaw in today’s software. Most software isn’t developed with Portable guys (like me) in mind. When you have a netbook with only 20GB available you start to rely on your pen drive for most stuff. And if you discover that you can carry applications in your pen drive instead of installing them on you pc, them you will understand my reasoning. Also, my EEE 901 has Ubuntu linux on it, being the core of the OS in the 4GB SDD and the HOME partition on the 14 GB SDD. If I went around and installed all the stuff I need I would run out of space in no time (and trust me, my installation of Ubuntu was 6 months ago and I only have 600MB out of 4GB free).

And if I’m going to a place where I know that I’ll have a pc available, I don’t want to carry my netbook with me (the screen is to small for a long term usage). So what’s my “solution”? Portable windows applications. If you go to any kind of torrent site you’ll loads of software, from the MS Office tools, to burning software, media players, games and other software. However, none (or very few) are legal copies of the software you want/need to use.

The way I see it, we are going to have a real battle between OS in the (very) near future. Mostly because they will all want to be the masters of Tablets, in the same way that Windows is the master of personal computers (I know there are a lot of Mac and Linux users around, but let’s face it, most of the computers have windows installed).

And if the event is inevitable, as I think it is, them, in my opinion, developers should start focusing on making their applications portable and able to run from a pen drive.

Just imagine the following situation:
We are a supervisor at a construction site, going around with your Windows tablet pc, taking notes and checking stuff, saving the documents and notes directly to your loyal high-capacity pen drive. You finish your walk-around and it’s time to show the results to your superior. Unless your superior has the programs you use to take the notes, you’ll have to show them on the tablet screen, that might not be the most comfortable screen to see it. But what if the programs you use are portable editions, that can easily run from a pen drive? You just un-plug the pen drive from your tablet, plug it on his computer and voila! You are now showing the result of your work on a comfortable 14″+ screen.

I hope I’ve made my point clear. In the near future we need legal and ready to use portable applications. As for me, I’ll continue to use the not so legal version (I actually own all the “portable” applications I use) but portable applications because I have to think about my health (specially my eyes).

Be well!

Francisco Ribeiro

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about comments

Filed Under: My thoughts by dr3amcast3r — Leave a comment
July 6, 2010

Imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from wordpress telling me I had to review several comments. I came in to check on them and I was presented with more than twenty comments for approval… Great I think. Until I started to read them. most where in Russian. I don’t read Russian. Some where some days old (had seems those already) but most of them where new (around a few hours new). So I had to pass them through Google translator (most if not all are badly translated). Paste the translation in the comment and approve them.

But, my friends, in the future please comment in English, avoid posting links in the comments because I’ll most likely delete those links (I won’t if I have time to check them in Linux).

There will be a new page with guidelines for comments, but for now, stick with this two:

  1. Post in English (makes my life a lot easier)
  2. Avoid posting links
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About Android

Filed Under: android, Smartphones by dr3amcast3r — Leave a comment
June 11, 2010

About one year ago I bought my first android phone. Thanks to e-bay I became the proud owner of a MyTouch 3G google branded. I was amazed with the platform, it was quick and clean. Google Maps worked great and thanks to Android Market I quickly download several applications that looked great.

After a few days my disappointments started. There was no out of the box solutions for editing word and excel documents. A pdf reader was nowhere to be seen, and every solution I found online for bought issues was payed applications, and not cheap ones in my opinion.

So after just five months of using my android for almost everything I was forced to start using my girlfriend HTC prophet.

What forced me to do it, you might ask. Quite simple. A Google Branded Android is next to useless when you want productiviy on your smartphone. Why? Quite simple.

  • No sync with outlook. You are forced to sync with online servers, which is not very safe if you’re handling sensitive information about your work.
  • No out-of-the-box tools for opening and editing .doc and .xls, not even a link to google docs… a really big screw up if you want my opinion.
  • Not out-of-the-box pdf reader. most documents today are shared using this format. Google could at least put in a crappy pdf reader just to say it has was one.
  • No out-of-the-box task manager. Think a little Google devs… Can someone really manage a job without a task manager?
  • Contact management was and still is hellish at best. In my case I simply use ePhonebook to get the job done.
  • Theres no possible way to organize your applications in the application menu without installing third party software.
  • Root… why on Earth do I need to temper with my phone guaranty to be able to take screenshots from the phone or to customize it? This looks like the policy of certain companies that like proprietary software…

In my opinion, if Google really wants to be a big company in the world of OS for smartphones they have to do some major changes on the way they work with Android.

My suggestions to Google are:

  • Create a tool that allow people to cook their own roms and flash them safely on the phone they bought.
  • Give us root and engineering spl access out of the box. Add an applications for us to enable and disable it at will.
  • Allow us to further customize the application list on the main menu.
  • Give us sync with outlook or create a desktop application that allows us to sync our personal information only on our personal computer.
  • Give us off-line versions of Google docs and Google viewer.
  • Give us dvix and subtitles on movies and a audio-book application
  • Enable payed applications for all countries (I live in Portugal and without root I don’t have access to payed applications).
  • Allow us to use Bluetooth to share files and vcards.

But it’s not all bad. Personally, and despite all the things above, I wouldn’t trade my Android for another phone. I bought an Omnia II I8000, but it’s because of the flaws above.

The things I just love on my Android.

  • How easy it is to find and install new software.
  • The great offer there is on the Android Market, even only with access to free applications.
  • The evolution of the platform.
  • The possibility of finally (and without time) receiving the upgrade to Froyo.
  • The sound and camera quality.
  • The cleanness of the Interface.

Be well and I sure hope Google reads this and pays some attention to my suggestions.

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Wifi Remote Access for Windows Mobile

Filed Under: Smartphones, Windows mobile by dr3amcast3r — 1 Comment
June 7, 2010

One of my main problem with having a windows mobile phone and a linux netbook is how to copy files from the netbook to the pocket pc and the other way around. In my Android I have an application that solves me the problem, aFile, which transforms you phone on a mobile server you can browse via a web-browser on your pc. But, alas, my problem is on my Windows mobile pc and not on my Android… that was until link8506 dropped is Wifi Remote Access on Xda-developers forum. And thank God he did 🙂 And the best part is… the application is also available on OMarket, meaning you can download it directly to your pocket pc.

So let’s check the Application it self.

When you start the application you are greet with the below screen where you can change a lot of stuff, but most important, to enable the remote access

Here the Remote access is already enabled

Once that’s done you just type the ip address on a web-browser and, put in the password you choose before and your good to go.

The server offer the basic file/folder operations like rename, delete, add folder, upload file, among other. For a full description of the operations please check the application thread on Xda.

Here are some screens of some of the operations I made.

Conclusion:

Pros

  • Efficient
  • Just what I was needing for my daily work;
  • Secure, you need a password to open the “file server”
  • Basic operations are there

Cons

  • The interface could use a little work (but it’s great as it is)

Classification: 9/10 Let’s wait for version 2.0 to give a perfect score

Links

Xda-developers news about the application

Xda-developers application thread

Technical sheet:

  • Application tested on Samsung Omnia 2 I8000
  • Review written on the web application via “Firefox” 3.6.3 for Windows Vista
  • Computer used: Asus Laptop (don’t recall model) running Windows Vista
  • Screen shots of pc actions where taken using Fireshot extension for Firefox
  • Screen shots of pocket pc action where taken using Ilium Screen Capture for windows mobile
  • Pictures uploaded to dropbox for usage via Droppedboxx for windows mobile
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Droppedboxx for windows mobile

Filed Under: Smartphones, Windows mobile by dr3amcast3r — 3 Comments
June 5, 2010

First things first. I’m a huge fan of Dropbox. I have it installed on my Asus EEE pc, my Asus Laptop (don’t recall the model, sorry), on my HTC Magic 3G, and now, thanks to d1k_is from Xda-Developers I can have it on my windows mobile pocket pc.

I loved the program so much I decide to give you, the ones that read this blog wannabe, a full review of the application.

When you open the application you’re presented with a double text field to put your username and your password of dropbox. Right below the text field is a little check box that will save your login details for future uses of the application, so make sure you check it.

After a successful login we get a screen where you can choose the sync folder (syncing not supported yet) and have several options on the bottom bar. Some of them haven’t been implemented yet, but they look promising.

The buttons are, from left to right: sync; dropbox, configuration, about, logout

In the configuration screen you now have the choice to make the application forget you login details as you can see beloow.

When you press the center of the screen, you’re taken to a browser like selection screen where you can choose the folder for syncing with your dropbox. But, as stated above, syncing is not yet supported.

Back to the main screen, the button that interests us right now is the second one from the left in the main screen. When you press it you’re taken to your dropbox, where you can browse your folders and files at will, add or delete folders, take pictures and send directly to the selected dropbox folder, upload files, download them and even send them as attachments via your e-mail client 🙂

Folder options

Up here we have, in order: take a photo and upload directly, Add Folder and Delete folder and Paste file (which you can copy using the 3rd button when you select a file- see file options)

File options

This five options are, in order, Download,  Attach (to email), Copy file (not yet), delete file and cancel selection.

In both option the upload file is always visible (top right corner).

Conclusion:

Pros:

  • It’s the Application that was missing in any professional smartphone.
  • You can check it to remember your login details, saving you the time of inputing them every time you start the application.
  • Over wi-fi it’s quick, so quick that I didn’t saw any difference between this one and the pc version.
  • Has all the essential file/folder operations, plus the take photo and upload it right to the dropbox.
  • You’ll be able to choose the sync folder on your device.
  • You can choose the destination folder when you want to download a file

Cons:

  • Stability problems, it crashes very often
  • Doesn’t save my login details (but it’s a beta so this might be remove in the future)
  • Doesn’t sync (yet, beta :))

What I would like to see in the application:

  • An option to upload several files at the same time (might became useless when sync it working… but it would be nice all the same).
  • The option to only sync certain files or folder (in order to avoid an overcrowded sd card for people that have large files or a lot a things on the dropbox.
  • Be a pal and put it on Omarket

Classification: 8/10 – might reach 10/10 when the beta is over

note: the review is now up to date.

Links:

Xda-developers news about the application

Xda-developers application thread

Technical sheet:

  • Application tested on Samsung Omnia 2 I8000
  • Review written on the web application via “Firefox” 3.6.3 for Windows Vista
  • Computer used: Asus Laptop (don’t recall model) running Windows Vista
  • Screen shots of pocket pc action where taken using Ilium Screen Capture for windows mobile
  • Pictures uploaded to dropbox for usage via Droppedboxx for windows mobile
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We All Like to Reblog (via WordPress.com News)

Filed Under: My thoughts by dr3amcast3r — 19 Comments
June 5, 2010

So wordpress just dropped another feature for our enjoyment. With this new feature we can share everything we like within wordpress we our readers.
It’s a all new way to express ourselves and share our taste with the blog sphere.

Thanks a lot WordPress for making our lives as sharers more easy!

🙂

We All Like to Reblog Have you ever come across a blog post that you enjoyed so much you wanted to easily share it with the readers of your own blog? Sure, you can copy and paste the link and perhaps even a snippet of text with your own comments, but overall it’s not a particularly enjoyable experience. We wanted to change this and make sharing other posts with your readers as easy as posting to your blog. Today we’re introducing a new like and reblog feature enabled … Read More

via WordPress.com News

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