Tag Archive: tools


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

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Comment

Go domain!!!

Filed Under: Uncategorized by dr3amcast3r — 3 Comments
August 13, 2013

After deep consideration, I’ve decided to register a domain for myself. Fortunately the one I really wanted (Dreamcaster Studio) was available and I use godaddy to make the registration. The price was very nice, around 3€ for a year, and I manage to redirected it to my wordpress blog with the same name very easily. Then I came across the Affiliated program. Basicly they pay me to put a banner in my site, offering massive discounts (the one below is of 34% off) at the registration of new domains.

So, although this is an initial review, I’ve decided to post it here because this discount end by August 31th, so there not much time to take advantage of it. If you have a blog or a site and you where thinking about registering a domain for it, this might be the discount opportunity you’ve been waiting for.
New Customers get 34% off their order at GoDaddy.com! Expires 8/31/13AFF_FD34OFF_200x200

Tags: , , , , ,
Comment

Cyannogen 6.0 – the android revolution

Filed Under: android, Smartphones by dr3amcast3r — 1 Comment
October 24, 2010

A few weeks ago I decided that I wouldn’t wait any longer for the “masters” at AT&T resolve in gracing us with android 2.2 for MyTouch 3G (my android phone), so I went ahead with the plan of rooting my device and installing CM 6.0.

I had been reading the CM wiki and forum for a few months, in order to be on the safe side and make sure that I would lose the minimal information and data possible.

The tools I used where:

My ride was everything but a smooth one.

My first mistake was to try to backup stuff without root access 🙂 But that was easily solved with Universal Androot and following the site instructions and installing Titanium Backup afterwards with a full backup right after.

Then came my second problem. Making my M$ Vista recognize my phone in fast boot. You need to install the SDK tools, make the full update and only after that connect your phone, already on fast boot to the pc. Then, don’t choose install automatically, choose “Search folders and specificly locations” (or something like that) and target the folder x:sdktoolsdrivers (where “x” is the drive letter) and install. And puff you can now use the command prompt to stream the recovery to your phone.

At this point you should already have on your sd card the following:

  • Rom of choice (for this post CM6.0)
  • The recovery you want to install (Amon_Ra)
  • Google apps at choice

Use the screens to apply the rom and restart the phone. If you, by any chance want to flash a recovery file and after the streaming of amon_ra, adb stops recognizing the phone, don’t worry, you can solve it later. I worried for nothing 🙂 I just applied the rom and make the huge mistake to flash the wrong google apps pack, so I had to reset the device and flash the correct one (some people at Cyannogen forum might remember the thread I made before realizing my mistake).

And whatever you do, you must wipe your phone.  I tried without wipe and the rom didn’t even boot (I actually thought I had bricked my phone). After the rom was up and running it was time for the restoration of my personal data. Contacts, Calender (not that important) and messages (deadly important).

I went back to Titanium Backup and attempted a full restoration, that messed up my phone so badly I just did another wipe. After the 3rd wipe because off bad restorations I decided to make a selective restoration, mainly of sms and some other data.

After this I just use Rom Manager (that comes with the rom) to install Amon_Ra Recovery, reinstall some of my apps, most of them I didn’t reinstall because I didn’t actually used them 🙂

My only two problems right now is that none of my previously installed apk via market where there for me to download again and the market takes a lot of time to download apk, even at wi-fi right next to the router (like half a meter away from it)

At endnotes I want to thanks Cyannogen for the great work he’s done on this rom. Much faster than the stock rom I had, and thanks all the devs behind the tools I used to make my upgrade smooth and possible 🙂

Francisco Ribeiro

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Comment

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

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Comment

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
Tags: , , , , , ,
Comment

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
Tags: , , , , ,
Comment

Ilium Screen Capture for windows mobile

Filed Under: Smartphones, Windows mobile by dr3amcast3r — 2 Comments
June 1, 2010

So I was browsing trough xda looking at some of the news, specially the news app that the guys at the forum are always releasing and I decided to try one out, but I wanted to post some pics of it on the review. That took me on another search, and in this type of cases, google is your friend.

As a result of the search I came across the ilium screen capture tool (first result on google actually). I try it out and decided to share you, my estimated readers, my opinion about the tool itself.

The application is quite simple. You just start it from the start menu or from a shortcut and you are presented with the screen below.

By pressing menu you can choose some options.

The second one allows you to choose the hardware button to press in order to take the shots and the length, in seconds, of the timer.

The timer option, when pressed  will take a screen shot in x seconds (that can be changed in the options menu)

The third option is quite interesting actually. Ilium software produces more applications. via the “More” menu you can download them to you device directly which is quite handy 🙂

Conclusion:
Pros:

  • The software does what the producer say it does. A very simple, low-weight, and straight foward application. It’s ideal for people that want to take screenshots of they are doing.
  • The web-site allows you to download the .cab, meaning you can install it on the fly
  • One single note: when the app is running the chosen hardware button will only perform the screen capture, the default action of the chosen button will be override.

Cons:

  • You can’t choose the destination folder or the base name of the files.

Classification: 9/10

sites:

Ilium Software
Screen Capture

Technical sheet:

  • Application tested on Samsung Omnia 2 I8000
  • Review written on the web application via “Chrome” for linux
  • Computer used: Asus eee pc 901 running eeebuntu nbr 9.10
  • 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
Tags: , , ,
Comment