10 cool cell phone tricks
Has
your cell phone done anything for you recently? Mine just updated my blog. Then it told me my
friend Mike was couple streets over. Next it showed me my RSS feeds from google.
After that I was listening to a song on the radio and wasn’t to sure what it
was and my cell phone told me. Then I was stuck in a boring meeting and my new
best friend (my cell phone) got me out of it/
No,
no, I didn’t go into the future and come back with the iPhone 29; all these
features can be done with everyday mobile phones. You just got to know where to
look and how to use it. With the right software and services, your phone can do
all sorts of little tricks and services that could make your life a lot more
easy.
Build a
blog
Do
you blog like most of people today? Need to update your blog and have something
that just came to you that you want to write down? What's interesting about it
is that you can actually create a new blog from your phone, just by sending a text or photo
SMS to go@blogger.com.
In
short order, you'll receive a reply listing your new blog's URL and a
"claim code" to enter atgo.blogger.com. From there you have the option of routing mobile
posts to the new blog or an existing one. Choose a template (if necessary) and
you're done. You'll see your initial SMS; any additional posts sent to that
same e-mail address will instantly appear on your blog. Pretty nifty way to
instant-blog your vacation, night on the town or random thoughts.
Share
photos and videos
Blogger
is all well and good for posting text and the occasional snapshot, but it's not
exactly a multimedia powerhouse. If you want to insta-share photos or even
videos of, say, Britney Spears' latest wardrobe malfunction or your boss
dancing on a table, look to services like JuiceCaster and Pickle. After setting up an
account (both sites are free), you simply shoot your snaps and clips to a
special e-mail address. This creates personalized content channels you can
view/share/edit online or add to other sites (like Facebook, Blogger and Twitter).
I have to give Pickle the nod in the ease-of-use department, but I like
JuiceCaster's embeddable MediaBox. Guess you'll have to try them both.
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Find
nearby friends
Want
to hook up with a bunch of friends? Instead of calling them all individually,
try Dodgeball.
This recently acquired Google service lets you broadcast your whereabouts to
your circle, send messages to multiple friends, find the address/cross streets
of a venue and even stalk "crush on" someone you've checked out online. (The
Dodgeball site includes a social-networking component, with profiles, photos,
and all that.) It's an interesting service, especially if you live in a big
city and enjoy the nightlife. Just make sure your phone's service plan includes
unlimited texting, otherwise you could rack up some substantial SMS charges in
a hurry.
Leave
yourself a message
The
age-old trick of leaving yourself a voice-mail reminder gets a Web 2.0 twist
with services like BrainCast and Jott, which work like this: Dial
a special number, then leave yourself a message. The service then forwards the
recording to you via e-mail, which not only makes for faster, easier retrieval
of your messages, but also keeps your regular voice-mail box from getting
overly cluttered.
Better
still, BrainCast and Jott let you store, manage and even share these messages.
Jott, however, has the edge with its glitzier web interface and
message-transcription feature: Your recordings are automatically turned into
text. (Humans perform this function, but Jott promises strict security and
confidentiality.) Whichever service you go with, you'll quickly come to find it
indispensable.
Schedule
an interruption
Excise
yourself from a bad date or boring meeting with Popularity
Dialer, which calls you at a scheduled time and plays one of several
prerecorded messages. These "half conversations" (which include calls
from "the boss" and a "cousin in need") save you from
having to fake your end of the conversation, which always looks, well, fake.
You can preview the recordings on the Popularity Dialer so you know what to
expect.
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Who sings
this song?
Ladies
and gentlemen, boys and girls, for my next magical illusion, I will use this
ordinary cell phone to identify the song now playing on this ordinary radio.
Watch as I wave my magic wand and Shazaam! Ok so its not really magic but I had you
going there. Shazaam is a nice app that
allows users to found out who sings and the name of the songs they are listening
to.
Nothing
up my sleeve, mind you.
Abracadabra!
My phone has revealed the mystery song. Thank you, you're marvelous.
Find
missing children
Statistics
show that the first three hours after a child is abducted are the most critical
in recovery efforts. The Wireless Foundation, in conjunction with the National
Center for Missing & Exploited Children and virtually all wireless
carriers, offers AMBER
Alerts via SMS.
Simply
enter your phone number and up to five ZIP codes (so the service knows which
alerts to send your way). When an AMBER Alert gets issued for your area, you'll
immediately receive a text message including the child's description, where
he/she was last seen, and any pertinent vehicle data. The participating
carriers deliver these messages free of charge, so there's absolutely no cost
to you. Do your part and sign up now.
Monitor Your
Heart Rate
I
was sure that this app was completely bogus when I first saw it, but after a
quick trial run, it seems pretty convincing. The Heart Fitness app claims that it can effectively monitor your heart
rate using only your iPhone. How in the world is that possible?
Heart Fitness
To
accomplish this feat, the app takes advantage of both the camera and the bright
LED on the back of your iPhone 4. First, you cover the light and the camera
with your index finger. The light then illuminates your finger so that the
camera reads that reddish color that results when you stick a flashlight up to
your finger.
Here’s
where the magic happens. As blood is pumped into your finger, the hue pulses.
The camera reads this pulse and uses it to measure your heart rate! Pure voodoo
right? Perhaps not. I tested the app on myself a few times and consistently
came up with a measurement around 70BPM, which I confirmed by taking my own
pulse manually. Then I got up and ran around for a while and used the app
again, over 100BPM this time. As crazy as it sounds, it seems to work!
Now,
many commenters note that they can get readings from every day items such as
ketchup bottles, but this doesn’t prove anything. If you consider that the app
reads pulses in color, pointing your camera at something red combined with
camera-shake would produce a similar result. This proves that you can trick the
app, but not that it doesn’t do what it claims.
Turn MP3s
into ringtones
Paying
for ringtones is like paying for sex: It should be done only as a last resort.
If you own a phone that plays MP3s and supports custom ringtones (as most
models do these days), it's a fairly simple matter to turn any MP3 into your
very own 'tone. There are several services you can use out there but I use MiniTones and
it is free as well.
Scan
Documents
You
know that your iPhone has a camera on it, so it’s no surprise that it can take
a photo of a document right? The problem with this though is that a handheld
camera is a far cry from a flatbed scanner. Holding your phone perfectly level
isn’t easy, even if you can pull it off, it’s still a hassle.
Enter Genius Scan. With this app you can
quickly snap a shot of any document without really thinking about how properly
aligned it is on your screen.
Genius
Scan will automatically detect the edges of the document and allow you to
quickly skew the perspective so that you get a perfect shot every time.
Genius Scan
You
can save your documents as a PDF or JPG and even share them over Wifi for quick
access from any computer.
Labels: cell phone repair, Cell phone repair Louisville, cell phone tips, cell phone tricks, louisville ky, The CellPhone Doctor
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