Android App: GateGuru - Your Mobile Airport Guide

Androinica » GateGuru gets you through the airport with all necessary info [App Reviews]: "GateGuru is a travel companion that provides information on nearby airports and the trips that you take through them."

Bored with Craigslist? Try EggDrop!

Will Craigslist budge? Highly unlikely. But it's going to be fun while the guys have funding.

EggCartel Makes Craigslist Look Even Older With The Fast, Mobile EggDrop (And Funding): "Adding items is as easy as taking one picture with your phone, setting a price, and uploading. You can add a title and other details, but EggDrop does the rest to categorize your product on the backend. From there, it’s listed in a location-based directory accessible by the apps. Users look for items they’re interested in and can watch them to see how the price fluctuates, or can put down a bid right away. It’s Dutch auction-style, so the price goes down over time if no one bids."

Google Goes Social with Google+ Project

The Keep Me Posted button is broken now by the way.

The Google+ project: real life sharing, rethought for the web.: "Right now, we're testing with a small number of people, but it won't be long before the Google+ project is ready for everyone. Leave us your email address and we'll make sure you're the first to know when we're ready to invite more people."

On Inadequacy of Android In-app Payments for the Situations Where They Could Have Been Most Useful

Nowadays more and more Android applications allow us to buy something from within an application. This goes way beyond ammo and spells towards coupons (Groupon) and movie tickets (Movies). Here in the land of real goods and services the troubles start.

What I'm talking about is in-app payments - a standard Android mechanism that can be used to buy "stuff" from within an application. It works like a charm for charms, spells, ammo, and eagles but fails miserably for real-world things that I actually want to buy.

Why? Because of Google's 30% cut. Everything that goes through the in-app payment chain is subject to 30% deduction similar to what Google charges developers for regular paid applications.

Because of that the application vendors have to resort to proprietary payment solutions, which results in sub-optimal user experience. As a user I'd rather allow Groupon or Movies to tap into my Google Checkout account that I use for Android Market purchases anyway versus giving my credit card information to an application that I potentially don't trust.

My hope is some day there's going to be a distinction between pure virtual goods and real world goods and services and the vendors of Android applications that facilitate real world transactions will be given more favorable terms to enable them to leverage in-app payments for all the good things they have to offer.

T-Mobile Officially Announces myTouch 4G Slide, Boasts Phone's Camera

The ability to take multiple pictures in a quick succession is a very handy one for those of us who's into kids, sports, and insects. While present in pro-grade cameras, the feature is less common in consumer photo equipment and until today was unheard of in smartphones. myTouch 4G Slide's BurstShot changes all that.

Androinica » T-Mobile makes myTouch 4G Slide official: $199, 4G, “most advanced camera of any smartphone”: "The 8 megapixel camera has an illuminated sensor with wide aperture lens, instantaneous shots to shutdown shutter lag time, Sweepshot for taking panoramic images, ClearShot HDR to take contrast-heavy HDR photos, and BurstShot to take multiple photos in succession. The camera also shoots 1080p HD video."

ActionComplete for Web Adds Recurring Tasks, Enhances Email Integration | ActionComplete

ActionComplete for Web has just received a major feature update. Now the web application handles recurring tasks and sports full-fledged email integration.

A user can create a task that repeats every specified number of days, on particular days of the week, or on a chosen day of the month. The recurrence can be unlimited or have a specified end date. A popup or email reminder can be automatically setup for every new occurrence of the task.

Email integration comprises several nifty features: email reminders, Nag me (TM) reminders, sending tasks to ActionComplete via email, and checking off tasks by email.

Email reminders are sent out at the time specified by the user. An email reminder is a vehicle that can be used to check off the corresponding task. It's as simple as replying to the reminder, typing the word "done" in the body, and hitting Send button.

Nag me (TM) is a smart opt-in email reminder system that automatically notifies a user about the tasks that haven't been touched for 30 days or more. Nag me (TM) is yet one more effective way to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

It's easy to send tasks to ActionComplete via email. Every user has a special ActionComplete email address that can be used to send in new tasks and check off existing tasks. The details of setting up and using email integration features are described in the user manual.

ActionComplete for Web is sold for $19.99/year. When a user first signs in to the application, he/she is issued a license that allows access to the full product for 7 days.

The full press release can be found here.

ActionComplete for Web Adds Recurring Tasks, Enhances Email Integration | ActionComplete

E-Readers Are On The Rise, Grow Faster Than Tablets

I wonder if that's because they are not as expensive or because they actually have a purpose?

Pew: Adoption Of E-Readers Doubles In 6 Months, Bigger Than Tablets: "A new Pew research survey of U.S. adults conducted in May, 2011 shows that ownership of electronic readers such as the Amazon Kindle or The Barnes & Noble Nook is now at 12 percent. The ownership of e-readers doubled from six months prior when it was 6 percent."

Vegetarian Recipes at Recipe.com

Vegetarian Recipes - Vegetarian - Recipe.com: "Anyone can follow these easy vegetarian recipes for a healthy weeknight meal. From shepherd's pie to cheesy lasagna, your family will come back to these vegetarian recipes again and again."

J.K. Rowling Announces Pottermore.com: Harry Potter Forever

And you thought the fun was over?

J.K. Rowling, the author of the bestselling series of books about the battle between the good and the evil in a parallel magical world, partnered with Sony on a website that aims to help the story live on.

I don't know about you but I'll definitely be buying those eBooks.

pottermore.com is said to open in October. You can register now and get in earlier than that if the stars align.

Pottermore: Sony: "Pottermore is an online reading experience built around the world of Harry Potter, created for a new digital generation of readers who can share and participate in the stories, showcase their Potter-related creativity and discover new information about the world of Harry Potter from the author herself. It will also be the exclusive place to purchase, for the first time, eBooks, as well as digital audio books of the Harry Potter series."

Archos Announces 2 Powerful and Affordable Android Tablets

Both tablets run a dual-core 1.5 GHz A9 processor (Texas Instruments). More importantly they have a full suite of Google applications on board, which is a big deal considering the history of Archos Android products.

ARCHOS Unveils Fastest Tablets with G9 Tablet Range: "While the competitors’ tablets are priced starting at $499, ARCHOS is offering an 8’’ tablet starting at $279 and 10.1’’ tablet starting $349.

ARCHOS is offering cutting-edge performance such as a more powerful and faster processor, unique 3G solution, enhanced multimedia experience and more storage capacity with the built-in 250GB HDD from Seagate.

ARCHOS are the first in the industry to offer a tablet with a hard drive, bringing 8 times more storage at the same cost of a standard 32GB tablet.

ARCHOS are also the first to offer such high performance at such affordable price, making ARCHOS G9 tablets the best cost-performance value.

The ARCHOS 80 G9 and ARCHOS 101 G9 will be available at the end of September and will be shown beginning of September at IFA."

Glympse Helps You Share Your Location, A Few Hours At A Time

I used it for a while around 2 years ago and finally quit due to the lack of meaningful sharing opportunities. (You don't want to share your daily commute to/from work, do you?)

Admittedly it's got to be useful for the folks who drive around a lot and are chronically late to everything. Not that they are going to be on time more often, but it'll give them a plausible excuse of why it happens.

Glympse Raises $7.5 Million To Help You Share Your Location, A Few Hours At A Time: "So far, the service offers applications for iPhone and Android that let you create ‘Glympses’, which include a map of your location in real-time. You then share these Glympses with friends via SMS, email, Facebook, or Twitter — clicking on the link will take them to a webpage that shows a map with your location updating in real-time (the Facebook widget actually updates directly in the News Feed). You get to set how long you want each Glympse to last — it can be as long as four hours, though the average Glympse is around forty minutes. Once it expires, they can no longer see your location.

Say, for example, you were running late for a meeting and wanted your coworkers to have a sense for when you’d be arriving at the office. Instead of having to send a series of text messages (“15 minutes..”, “traffic bad, make that 30 min”, and so on), you could just send a Glympse that let them track your progress on a map. Then, when you arrived, you could turn the Glympse off and the map would stop updating."

Android App Review: miCoach from Adidas

About a month ago I installed this wonderful application on my phone. For those wondering what I'm talking about, miCoach is "digital personal coach" application for runners, bikers, skiers, and other folks interested in having important metrics such as pace, distance, and time captured during their workouts.

The initial setup is sort of lengthy but once you are through, including the online part at micoach.com, it's a smooth ride, stroll, or run.

Although there are many things you can do with and in the app I found that the Free Running is the mode I need. In this mode the only guidance you get is periodic announcements of your time, mileage, and whatever other characteristics you select, such as pace and calories burnt.

Initially I was quite excited about the pace notifications but soon figured the measurements were not quite reliable (albeit funny as during my runs they ranged wildly between somewhat above a minute per mile and fifty-something minutes per mile) and turned them off.

Over the past month, or maybe six weeks, the application was quite stable and trustworthy. There was one serious glitch when the app bailed out without a notice after exactly 22 minutes of use. Barring that single occasion the application yielded remarkably consistent tracks and was generally well-behaved.

If you are a proponent of active lifestyle and happen to have an Android phone around miCouch might be just the thing you need.

MyGengo Raises $1 Million, Login Page Broken

Is this why I can't log in to mygengo.com/string for a few days?

MyGengo Raises $1 Million To “Own” Translation: "Translation service MyGengo has raised one million in seed financing from Point Nine, Mitch Kapor and Wenceslao Casares."

Small Business Owner Bookshelf: Social Marketing with Roost

Increasingly "social" means Facebook and Twitter.

Roost | Plans and Pricing: "The Roost Social Marketing Platform helps businesses who rely heavily on word of mouth and referrals tap into the power of the social Web more efficiently and more effectively."

App Engine 1.5.1 Adds Presence Support to Channel API

Very useful and much needed feature.

Google App Engine Blog: App Engine 1.5.1 Release: "Channel API (Presence Support): You can now configure an inbound service for your application to detect user presence for the Channel API. This lets you take an action when a user connects or disconnects from the Channel."

Best Pick Reports: Quality Home Service Guide (TM)

Did anyone use this? Is it any good? Is it comparable with angieslist.com?

Best Pick Reports by EBSCO Research: "Best Pick Reports is your free resource for finding top-quality home service providers in your local area. Best Pick Reports, which is published by EBSCO Research, features companies that have received an A-rating from more than 100 customer reviews."

Exercising While Fasting Is Claimed to Produce a Rejuvenating Effect

Now where do I get that whey meal thing?

Revolutionary Exercise Program to Keep Your Body Biologically Young: "You should seriously ask yourself what's your main fitness goal…getting big or getting young? Apparently, you can't have both…"

Swype 3 Introduces Horizontal Word Choice List, Adds Honeycomb Support

Very nice additions to a very useful tool.

Swype v3.0 released to BETA! - June 2011: "Horizontal Word Choice List (HWCL) - While the pop-up Word Choice Window served us well for a long time, we have decided to utilize Android's built-in horizontal word choice list functionality, bringing us in line with evolving input standards. Now, when you tap or Swype a word, suggestions will be displayed in a scrollable horizontal list above the keyboard. This has several major advantages:

1. No matter what happens, when you Swype something, a word will always be entered into the active text field.

2. We're able to display more suggestions at a time.
3. When you tap out a word, the characters you actually tapped - regardless of predictions - will appear at the beginning of the suggestion list.
4. Choosing to use a word you tapped in when it's not in our dictionary will offer an option to add that word to your dictionary via the HWCL; no more automatically adding misspelled words to the dictionary."

Small Business Owner Bookshelf: If You Are Big Enough Groupon Can Work (Wonders) for You

An interesting report of a merchant for whom Groupon worked as advertised. The take home thought? Do the math before the deal, track the customers when the deal is on, analyze the results when the deal is over.

The Ribman’s Response To Groupon Bashing: "Will everyone succeed using Groupon? Probably not. As a business owner, I feel like it’s my responsibility to look at this marketing tool and see if it works for my business. There is no question that it has paid for itself better than any other advertising medium we have ever used. The Groupon sales reps have been extremely helpful in telling me what to expect and how to prepare as well. For me, and, I suspect many other small business owners, this is a no brainer. For the money I spent on the discount, not only was I able to get my message out to almost 90,000 separate individuals, but I was easily able to capitalize on this and turn many of the guests into regular customers. Where else can a small business get that kind of marketing access? The simple answer is nowhere."

Blog This! Chrome Extension Makes Re-blogging/Quote-blogging Easy

Blogger Buzz: Blog This!: "When you install the extension, a button will appear on your browser toolbar. Simply click the button to open Blogger in a new application window.

The new post is pre-populated with a link to the web page you're on, as well as any text you've highlighted on that page. Edit the post to your liking and post it instantly to your blog."