Mac Legion

Mac Legion’s bundle only has a few hours left but it might be the least desirable from the bunch as most heavily discounted apps are Motion Composer and Nisus Writer Pro, which I have no interest in.

Link

Productive Macs

Productive Macs bundle is the least discounted, selling at $40 down from $264 but has a pretty good collection of apps such as Fantastical and Default Folder X among others. The bundle has 8 days to go.

Link

Bundle Hunt

Bundle hunt has remarkable savings as its the most discounted app bundle of the bunch, selling at $50 down from $1100. But again, the app collection is not for everyone as a Vector Collection wont do everyone some good. The bundle has 4 days left.

Link

Mac Update

I have written about Mac Update and their bundles before. They usually have the best app collection and this time its no different. The Winter 2011 bundle has some essential apps and I like there software management system. The bundle has just under 10 days left.

Link

If you are one that does a lot of online purchases from a number of retailers, you know that its hard to keep track of all of those receipts and orders.

A cool new website is Slice. What it does is simple but clever, it scans your e-mail for receipts and slowly starts building up your online purchase history. It also has very good search features and filters that helps when looking at your orders. You can also track your shipments directly from the website.

There is also an iPhone app available for free.

Slice

One of the best features of Android is that if you don’t like anything in the OS you can easily change it. Android’s default keyboard is pretty good, but not as good as SwiftKey X. It is the best keyboard I have ever used on any platform. One of my main gripes with SwiftKey X was that it didn’t support arabic. But with the latest update They included an Arabic keyboard. So now I don’t have to switch to keyboard every time I want to type anything in Arabic.

SwiftKey X is currently on sale on the Android Market and is being sold for $2 (down from $4).

Link

Got an iPhone? Thinking about jailbreaking it? don’t be fooled by the $10 app in the app store that doesn’t have sufficient description and tricks you into thinking it actually jailbreaks your phone. Its just a cheap game. I remember when the App Store was much more strict, but then again, I also remember the I Am Rich app that was being sold for $1000

Google and Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Nexus “Nexus Prime” and Ice Cream Sandwich today at their Hong Kong event. The phone and the softeware should be available in November.

It turns out the they Galaxy Nexus’s specs are the underwhelming ones that I previously mentioned. having 1.2Ghz CPU, 5MP rear camera, 1750 mAh battery. But its still considered one hell of a device.

The current phone specs are lacking the 2100Mhz band. I wonder how will this effect us here or are we going to wait for an international version.

Thanks Mohammed

Google in the other hand had simple voice search/command linked to its search app in Android. It is used even by Google Translate with its latest update giving it one hell of a functionality.

Vlingo Virtual Assistant:

The original is still the best voice-powered Virtual Assistant on Android.Looking for Siri-like functionality on your Android device? Look no further.

Link

Voice Actions:

Voice Action takes it a step further by enabling you to set alarms, reminders and ask it other various questions and it will answer. Its based on Google Voice Search so you must have it installed.

Link

Edwin

Another Google Search based app is Edwin, this app also lets you turn on stuff like bluetooth, wifi, ask it the time and weather. The searches are done via Wolfram Alpha (same as Siri)

Link

With that said, Apple’s implementation of voice commands is the most elegant of the bunch. Hope Google does the same in the next Android update.

Samsung just released its cross platform chatting application that will compete with BBM, iMessage and WhatsApp. The app will be available on a wide range of mobile OS’s like iOS, Blackberry OS, Bada, and Android. But one of the main features of ChatOn is -as Abdul Aziz puts it- its ability to receive notifications on the PC.

Came across this handy little feature today that would make life much easier for a number of people. You can now sign documents on your Mac using preview. I know I’m going to use this feature quite a lot.

I’ve been asked a lot lately about the Google+ app for Android. For some reason, its not showing up for some international users. And they are having a hard time hunting it down. The latest version of Google Plus on the Android is 1.0.5 and you can download it from here

There are a number of game console emulators on Android that makes it a great retro gaming platform. The problem was playing those games with the virtual keys were annoying. The availability of the Wiimote Controller app that lets you connect your Wii controller to your Android device made gamin a lot easier on Android, but having just 4 buttons on the Wii controller makes it hard to play SNES, Genesis and N64 games, But not Anymore.

Enter Sixaxis Controller that lets you connect your PS3 controller to your Android device via Bluetooth. The costs less than $2 and there is a compatibility checking app that you can download for free and run to make sure that your device is compatible.

Sixaxis Compatibility Checker

Sixaxis Controller

UPDATE:

Forgot to mention that your device has to be rooted. And for newer HTC and Samsung devices that might be incompatible, installing a custom ROM like Cyanogen should solve that problem.

A little Australian software company might just revolutionize the gaming industry if what they claim is true. The are claiming they can make games look 100,000 times better than what they look today by using “Atoms” instead the usual polygons.

Cyanogen mod is finally available for the Samsung Galaxy SII. Its not the final release yet, but I have been waiting a while for this mod so I jumped in as soon as they released their nightly builds for the SII.

The phone feels much snappier (if that is even possible) as there is now much less crap running in the background. And there is the usual tweaks of CM7, Like in the camera, dialer and other departments. But if you are using the SII as your main phone I would advise that you hold off a little while longer for a stable version.

Cyanogen Mod is available to a number of android devices. Check out their website to see if your device is supported.

Cyanogen

Galaxy SII Nightly builds

I showed previously a method that required a little command prompt know-how or required you just blindly follow the video to get Arabic support on your Galaxy S II.

Madmack, The guy who is almost single handedly bringing Arabic support to the SGSII released another custom ROM based on the leaked middle east ROM. Its stable and has great battery life. I highly recommend it. Also installing it is very simple.

Installing this ROM will wipe you device clean. so backup using titanium rom if you want your stuff.

Download the files needed from here

Installation guide: (From XDA-Developers)
1. put phone in Download Mode by holding Volume Down+Home Button+Power Button.
2. open Odin 1.85
3. Place my file in PDA.
4. DONT CHECK ANYTHING ELSE
5. flash away.
6. (Optional) factory resetting is probably a good idea too. Some people have suggested that it helps with bad battery drain when moving from one ROM to another.

Via XDA Developers

After getting all the necessary requirements. The first thing you should do is install the beta version of iTunes. Then launch it and select your idevice’s icon in iTunes and then click on “Restore” while holding “Control” if you are using windows on the “Option” key of you are using a Mac. Select the iOS 5 beta file that you downloaded and the rest should go smoothly.

]]> http://uptill1.com/2011/06/09/how-to-get-ios-5-on-your-ios-device/feed/ 5 http://uptill1.com/2011/06/07/apples-new-ios-5-and-other-announcements-video/ http://uptill1.com/2011/06/07/apples-new-ios-5-and-other-announcements-video/#comments Tue, 07 Jun 2011 07:34:26 +0000 N http://uptill1.com/2011/06/07/apples-new-ios-5-and-other-announcements-video/ If you follow me on twitter I would have bombarded you with tweets yesterday about both the WWDC and the E3 conferences that were taking place at almost the same time yesterday. Both had some exciting news coming out of them.

Notification:
This one was the most anticipated. Apple revamped the notification system on the iOS. making actually getting a notification more tolerable. Again a “borrowing” the idea from Google’s Android. you can slide down the screen a see all you notification and both the weather and stock widgets (and only widget sadly). Also, notifications will show up on your lockscreen. Making if more than just a glorified clock.

iMessage:
As I said yesterday, this just might be a BBM killer. The device automatically detects every iOS 5 user in your contacts and when you try to message them using the regular messaging app the bubbles switch from the standard green to a blue color indicating the use of iMassage. Apple still haven’t revealed fully how will this service work and will it identify contacts via mobile numbers mobile numbers the way Whatsapp does it or is it just an email account tie in.

Camera:
A few things happened to the photography aspect in iOS 5. for starters you will get a lock screen shortcut for the camera app for those critical moments when you need to access the camera as soon as possible. Also, you will be able to take a photo using the volume button instead of tapping on the screen. Lastly Apple also implemented some minor photo editing features the way iphoto handles editing on the mac. its more than enough for everyday photographer.

Mobile Safari Browser:
Tabbed browsing is long overdue on both iPhone and iPad. It works the same way it does as the desktop version of Safari but its only working on the iPad at the moment not sure if its coming to the iPhone at all. Also Apple added the ability to save long/multiple page articles for later viewing ala “Instapaper”. It also stripes away formatting of the page and convert it to a clean readable interface.

Thumb/Split keyboard is making an appearance. Reminds me of Microsofts Origami Project keyboards back in 2005/2006 and also the one Microsoft showed a few days ago in the Windows 8 video

iOS 5 and iCloud will be available this fall and OS X Lion will be available in July via the Mac Appstore.

Microsoft released a video showing an operating version of Windows 8. The Metro UI is a great touch-screen skin. I love it on the Windows Phone 7 and it looks great here. also, Microsoft seems to have got multitasking exactly right for tablets according to the video.

Tasker really shows the strength of the Android OS and how its taking advantage of the openness of the platform. With this program you can automate almost any task on your phone.

Some examples of some profiles I have created for the App:

• Make your music automatically play when you plug your headset.
• Turns off the ringer and switch the phone to vibrate only as soon as I’m at work.
• Switch on WiFi and turns ringer volume on to half way when I’m at home.
• Turns on “Airplane mode” at midnight so I won’t get any notifications and turns the phone back on with my alarm.
• When the remaining battery life is less than %15, the brightness is switched down to minimum, radios are switched to 2G and GPS is turned off to conserve battery life.

These are just a few examples of what I’m doing with the phone.

Tasker

A few months later fav4 was given an overhaul and now is known as Myfav.es, where the number of the shortcuts/icons increased significantly. You can also add your own pages and edit existing ones. Its been my homepage for a while now and love it.

Myfav.es

I am not that into customization of my PC’s due to the fact I format them every few months, because I love the “fresh start” feeling it gives me.

SO I wasn’t keen on trying Rainmeter, a Windows customization app the makes making your machine look the way you want as painless as possible. It gives you the ability to  customize the hell out of your PC.

The image above is of my desktop using one of Rainmeter’s default skins with a little extra tweaking.

Rainmeter [Link]

More Skins [Link]

I rarely blog on my iPad or even use it lately. But after stumbling on Blogsy, I might just use it more often.

Blogsy is a fully featured blogging application that supports WordPress and Blogger platforms at the moment. And is 10 times better than the official WordPress app.

It’s pretty straight forward to use and you can embed media from a number of online services and also from any webpage using the apps own integrated browser. It lacks the ability to add photos from your library, but its coming in the next update according to the developers.

The app costs . I think it’s worth it.

Oh and its free too.

Link

This video shows you how to make use of the Voice Search function that is available in the Android OS. Its pretty powerful and useful.

Yesterday, Blackberry owners here in Kuwait were surprised to see that they had new updates pending in the AppWorld application for those who had it installed. And for those who didn’t , Following the link below gave me the opportunity to download the latest version of the app on my Curve 8900. Also linking a payment method (I used a paypal account with a Kuwaiti credit card) to your account was a breeze.

AppWorld

Google really meant it when they said that they are developing a tablet centric version of android. Honeycomb looks like its going to be great. I’ve always complained about the waste of space and lack of live info on the iPad’s screen. And it looks like the 3.0 version of android is going to fix that.

The first Honeycomb device should be out as early as March.

Link

يسر وزارة الخارجية الكويتيه، وبمناسبة قرب حلول عيد الفطر المبارك وموسم
السفر، أن تعلن لمواطني دولة الكويت عن إطلاقها لخدمات تقنية نوعيّة
مجانية وذلك ابتداءً من اليوم الثلاثاء الموافق 7/9/2010.
وإستجابةً للتطورات التقنية المتسارعة، وإسهاماً منها في التيسير على
المسافرين من مواطني دولة الكويت ومراجعي بعثاتها في الخارج وسرعة
تواصلهم مع السفارات، وفّرت وزارة الخارجية لمستخدمي أجهزة الـ I Phone ،
الـ I Pad و الـ I Pod ميزة الإنزال المجّاني للبرنامج المعنون “Ministry
of Foreign Affairs State of Kuwait” عن طريق الـAPP Store للإستفادة من
تطبيقاته وخدماته المتعددة التي تُرشد المستخدم إلى البعثة الدبلوماسية
المراد الوصول إليها وذلك عن طريق خدمة تحديد الموقع، إضافةً إلى عنوان
البعثة الدبلوماسية (سفارة / قنصلية) وساعات دوامها الرسمي وهواتفها
وبريدها الإلكتروني.
كما إن من شأن البرنامج أن يُؤمِّن استلام مواطني دولة الكويت لآخر
الإرشادات الخاصة بالسفر والأخبار والتنويهات الصادرة عن وزارة الخارجية،
مما يكفل الإطلاع الفوري على المستجدات والإحاطة المباشرة بها، وذلك في
سابقةٍ تُعد الأولى من نوعها على نطاق الخدمات المقدمة من وزارات
الخارجية في منطقة الشرق الأوسط.
و تعد النسخة المطروحة نسخة تجريبية حيث يمكن لمستخدميها التواصل مع
الوزارة عن طريق البريد الالكتروني ”i.mofa@mofa.gov.kw ” في حال وجود اي
ملاحاظات و اقتراحات بشان الخدمة.