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To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade
Taking a moment away from the more typical “tutorial” type articles, we’re going to spend a minute and address a common question most people ask…”should I upgrade my devices’ operating system?” With iOS 5 hitting Apple devices recently and Android 4.0 (i.e. Ice Cream Sandwich) coming soon, this question is more relevant than ever.
The question always comes up…should I get the lastest version of my phones operating system (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry OS, etc). There is no simple answer but let’s look at a few questions to ask yourself before you make this decision. First off, take a look at what the features are that you’re getting in the upgrade. Often times the upgrades are marginal or impact aspects of the device that are irrelevant to you based on your usage. In those cases, no big worries in not getting the upgrade.
The next question is…at what cost will I get the upgrade. By this we mean what negative aspects are there in upgrading. Again, this depends on the type of user you are. If you’re someone that likes to tweak and mess with your phone (jailbreaking your iOS device or rooting your Droid) then you probably don’t want the latest version. Typically, new versions are released to block users from doing things that the mother ship frowns upon. For example, when the jailbreak method for the iPad 2 was finally released by hacker Comex, Apple immediately released an update to the operating system to block the jailbreak. They added virutally nothing else other than the block and because it came out so quickly following the release of the jailbreak, the majority of iPad 2 users were left with an (as of yet) un-jailbreakable device.
The same holds true for Android. While Google says it doesn’t take as active a role in trying to block rooting as Apple does against jailbreakers, new versions of Android are typically not compatible with current root method. This means you have to wait until an enterprising hacker or software developer comes up with a new method and sometimes those new methods aren’t quite as simple as the older ways. This also holds true for certain apps that, for example, allow you to turn a rooted device into a wifi hotspot. These features may be disabled on a newer version.
It’s always nice to have the latest and greatest and sometimes the upgrades genuinely do warrant the drawbacks or sacrifices one must make. All we suggest is to not take the idea of an upgrade as always being just that. Quite often an upgrade is nothing but a downgrade.
Push To Talk on Android with TiKL
Using our phones as walkie-talkies was made popular by the Nextel network and quickly became an indispensable tool for those on the go. Other carriers have tried setting up their own push-to-talk networks but for the most part have failed to find the same level of success. With the proliferation of the Android operating system, however, things are changing. Now our phones can run apps that give full push to talk functionality. Leading the charge is TiKL, a free app available on the Android Market that enables Push-to-Talk on any Android phones with the app installed. You can find the app at the following link…
Once downloaded, you go through your contacts and select the person you want to talk to from the list of everyone in your phones contacts. You can also save people to a favorites list for those people you talk to most frequently. Another great feature is the ability to adjust the privacy settings so you won’t disturb those around you if someone chirps you at an inopportune time.
Another great new feature of the app is the ability to use their Facebook app to be able to talk to anyone with the app right from your computer! Just go to https://apps.facebook.com/tikltalk/ and allow the app to access your Facebook account and you’re good to go.
With TiKL, potentially everyone using and Android device can now be on what could be the largest Push-To-Talk network around. Download, push, talk and enjoy. Drop a comment below if this works for you and share how you’re using TiKL to communicate faster.
WiFi Hotspot Without Root!
The lure of turning your phone into a wifi hotspot has called to many of us. The idea of being able to share our phones internet connection with any wifi enabled device seems too good to be true. Sure, we can do it by ordering that from our wireless carrier, but who want’s to shell out $30 or $40 a month?! Till now the only way around that was to root your phone which, depending on what version of Android you’re running, could be a slightly tricky proposition.
A new app that has shown up on the market promises to make the whole process easier and without having to root your phone. It’s called One Click USB Wifi Tether (I know…it’s a catchy title). You can find it at the link below…
The app is primarily a widget for your home screen. Once installed, simply long press on any of your home screens where you have some empty space. Select Widgets and then scroll down the list until you find the app. Once selected, a box with two buttons will appear on your desktop. The button on the right will activate the USB tethering if you have your device connected to a laptop or computer via USB. The button on the right will activate your wifi hotspot which is useful for sharing your internet with non-usb devices (like an iPad, for example). There have been reports that this app has been having problems working on Verizon phones since they are blocking the use of unauthorized wifi hotspot apps, even on rooted phones.
It’s a simple and elegant app that now lets more users harness one of the best features built into Android. And all this can be yours for only $1.99!
Head over to the market and pick it up and drop a comment below and let us know how it works out on your device and carrier.
Automatically Upload Pics to Dropbox with Dropin
For those not familiar with it, Dropbox.com is a fantastic site that gives you free, online cloud storage. You can basically upload just about any file there and then be able to access it from any computer or mobile device as long as it has an internet connection. It’s a great place to store files, videos, documents, pictures…just about anything you can think of.
Now there is a great little app that makes the upload process automated. Dropin automatically uploads pictures you take with your Android’s camera straight to Dropbox.com. This means that your files will automatically be online and ready to be shared since you can just send the link of the pic to anyone. Another plus is that in case your phone gets lost, stolen or damaged all your pics will be nice and safe in the cloud.
Dropin couldn’t be simpler to use. First off, download it from the Android Market by clicking on the link below…
Click Here to Download Dropin from the Android Market
Once you have the app downloaded, launch it. You’ll see a basic screen with some simple settings. You can set the app to send a picture to Dropbox.com as soon as the picture is taken, or you can set it to only do it when it’s using a wifi connection so it doesn’t waste your phones data bandwidth on file uploads. You can also set where you want your pics and videos to upload to on your Dropbox.com account (particular folders, etc).
Dropin is a very useful app to automate your usage of another great product…Dropbox. We love anything that takes care of simple tasks for us with minimal effort, and in that department, Dropin scores aces.
Download Torrents Directly to Your Android Phone with Swarm
To appreciate the mega-awesomeness of this feat, let’s first explain what a torrent is.
In the old days, file sharing sites would connect two computers together and one person could transfer a file from the other persons computer onto their own. The problem was that if the sender logged off, the receiver was completely cut off and left only with a partial file and would have to find another computer to copy from and start the whole process all over again. No bueno.
Enter the torrent. Now, instead of getting the file in one big piece from one other computer, your computer assembles it from little bits gathered from a lot of peoples computers. This means that if one person turns off their computer, the download will just continue with bits from other senders. No interruption and a faster overall download process.
To get your computer to download these little bits, first it needs some instructions on what it’s looking for, where to find the bits of information, and then how to put it all together in the end to make a complete file. These instructions are the actual torrent files. First a person goes to a torrent search engine like one of the ones listed below…
Torrentscan.com is a great site because it’s a list of multiple torrent search engines so it saves you some time when searching. From there, you type in the name of the file you’re looking for. You’ll see a list of files that match your search pop up. You will also see a column that shows “Seeders” and “Leechers.” Seeders are the number of people who are sharing a file from their computer, and Leechers (or peers) are the number of people looking for the file. If there are not enough seeders, the file will either be very slow to download or unavailable. Common courtesy in the torrent sharing community says to make sure to seed files you have while you search for other files. That way everyone can keep the action going. Once you know which file you want, click to download the torrent and small file (the instructions for downloading the real file) will be saved to your computer (or phone in our case).
Now that you have that torrent file, you need another application to open that file, read those instructions inside on what you want to download, and then it will begin the process of seeking it out, downloading and putting it all together. Until recently, this fairly complicated function was only capable from a computer as most phones did not have the horsepower or internet speed capabilities to handle this. Now, there’s an app that’s changed all that.
Swarm is an app for Android that will take a torrent and download the file directly to your phone. This means you could possibly download a movie directly to your phone and then watch it, all without having to get a computer involved (as long as it’s the right format, like .MP4). Swarm is an extremely simple app to use so let’s walk through and see how it works. Download Swarm from the link below…
Click Here to Download Swarm from the Android Market
By now you should have gone to the torrent site of your choice, found a good file and downloaded the torrent. Launch Swarm and click on the Add button in the top right of the screen. It will now ask you to find the file on your phone. Usually, this will have downloaded into the Downloads folder on your memory card or built in memory (depending on your model of Android phone). When you select the file, it will ask you what parts of the torrent you want to download. Some of the torrents include multiple parts (for example, an album download includes each song as an individual file…select only the ones you want to download or just download everything). From there it will say that’s it’s allocating the file and once that’s done, the download begins. That’s it!
A lot of adjustments can be made in the Preferences page
You can also go to the Preferences by click on the Prefs button on the top right of the screen and make any adjustments you want. You can also tell it exactly where you want the files you are downloading to be stored. Also, just remember that this sucks down battery like like a madman so you probably want to keep your phone plugged in while you’re downloading. It’s also not unusual for this to also make your phone a little hot because your CPU will probably be working overtime to make it happen.
Files will normally be in the Downloads folder
Hope this works out for you. If you have any other additional sites for finding torrents, drop them in the comments section below. Enjoy and happy sharing!
Free Android Apps with Aptoide
Not to sound like a broken record, but here’s yet another way to get FREE APPS FOR YOUR ANDROID!
To start off, here’s a little background info. Apps are stored in a place called a repository. A repository is a type of library or bank where these apps are stored and by using a particular app, you can access these libraries and download directly to your phone. The official Android Market itself is a type of repository. Just like the Blackmarket Alpha app we had mentioned before, Aptoide is another app repository full of appy goodness.
Aptoid is available on the regular Android Market so follow the link below on your Android powered device and download the Aptoide Installer.
Click Here for Aptoide Installer From Android Market
Get the Installer and run it and you’ll get the Aptoide app on your phone. Aptoid itself is a program that reads repositories, so now we need to tell it where the repositories are. We will start off by doing it the automated way and downloading another app from the Android Market that works with Aptoide to add the repositories. Click on the link below for the Aptoide Repos app.
Click Here for Aptoide Repos App from Android Market
Now we’re going to run the Aptoid Repos app and it’s going to automatically add a list of repositories (or repos). Let it do it’s thing and then run Aptoide. The first time you run it (and periodically from now on) the app will ask you if you want it to update it’s list of apps from the listed repositories. Click yes and let it re-populate the list. Once this is done, you can click on Games, Applications or Others to take you to the
Press Manage Repos to add repositories
corresponding lists of apps. You can also press the menu button and use the search option to find a particular app among the thousands listed.
The power of Aptoide lies in the ability to manually add any new repositories that they don’t list automatically through the Aptoide Repos app. To do this, click on the menu button from the main page, then click on Manage Repo. This takes you to the list of repositories you already have. To add a new one, click on the menu button, then click New Repository. This brings up a new box with a field for the website address. Enter the address and press Add. For our example, type http://repo.blackdroid.net and click Add. You will now see the new repository listed. When you go back to the Aptoide main screen by pressing the back key, it will again ask you if you want to update your list of apps based on this new repository. Let it update and you’re good to go.
Depending on what repos are automatically added, here are a couple must have for more free apps…
http://blackmarket.bazaarandroid.com
Adding a new Repo
Aptoide is also great because it lists what apps that you have already downloaded have updates available so you’re always running the latest and greatest version of your apps.
Hopefully this works for you. Drop a comment below if you know of any other noteworthy repositories that are floating around out there and happy downloading!
Free Music with GTunes Music
Apps aren’t the only thing floating out there for free. Now your ears can join in all the free goodness with the GTunes app. This app allows you to search for any song, album or artist and download directly to your phone for free. GTunes logs into online music libraries to bring them to your phone.
There was an earlier version of GTunes available on the Android Market for a limited time that allowed the best search and download capabilities. It was pulled early and replaced by another more watered down edition. The new GTunes (currently available on the market as of the writing of this post) lets you search for Artists only and then allows the download of only a few of that artists songs, often times live or acoustic versions. While this can be handy, it’s no where near as powerful as the original.
Worried that the original isn’t available on the market anymore? Fear not, readers…Hackmondo to the rescue. From your phone’s browser, click on the link below to download the original, more powerful version directly to your phone!
Click here for GTunes Android App
When you install the app and run it, it will most likely tell you that there’s a new version of the app available. Don’t bother with the upgrade. We’re pretty happy with what we have.
GTunes is a very simple and well laid out app overall. The first tab is the about tab which is what you will use to exit the app when not in use. To find a particular song, artist or album, click onto the Search tab and type in search box. Click on the magnifying glass to the right and it will pull up a list of matching search results. The list is compromised of songs or albums from various sources so you’ll see multiple copies. You’ll also see some written in foreign languages. For the most part, it’s best to download the file that has a larger file size since that usually equates to a higher quality audio file. When you select a song, you have the option of streaming it to make sure it’s the right song. Once you pick a song and click on download, you can go over to the download tab and see the progress. Naturally, the stronger your data or wifi signal, the faster the download.
You also have a Library tab to see all your downloaded songs (as well as any other music on your device) and a decent little audio player so you could do everything you need to do from within this one little app.
Now sit back, relax and let the music take you away! If this worked for you, drop a comment below and let us know what device and version of Android you were running and let us know if you use any other free music apps.
Free iOS Apps With Installous
One of the first questions anyone asks after jailbreaking is “Where da free apps at?!” Granted, some people may ask the same question in a more grammatically correct manner.
Once you are jailbroken, the process of being able to install free apps is fairly painless. First off, we have to address the issue of why someone would do this. The purpose of this hack is to be able to download apps for free to try out before you buy (emphasis being on “BEFORE YOU BUY”). If you find an app that you like, you should always, always, ALWAYS download the paid app from the App Store to support the app makers.
Step 1: Begin by going into Cydia (which you should have once you jailbreak your iOS device).
Click on Cydia
Step 2: Once inside Cydia, click on Sources on the bottom row of buttons
Click on Sources
Step 3: This screen shows the app repositories you currently have. (A repository is basically a big bank full of apps.) We want to add a new repository so click on the Edit button on the top right corner. On the next screen click on the Add button on the top right corner.
Step 4: Now we are going to tell the program where to find the new repository. Type the following into the search box, exactly as it appears so that your search box has only this text: http://cydia.hackulo.us
Once you have done that click on Add Source.
You’ll see this next screen as everything is installed.
The install screen
Step 5: Now your list of app repositories will have a new option…Hackulous. Click on it.
Step 6: Once inside the Hackullous app, click on the Install button on the top right corner.
Click Install
Step 7: Click Confirm on the next screen to finalize the installation
Click Confirm
Step 8: Once the installation is complete, you will see the Installous icon on your screen. Just tap this to launch your new Installous app store.
Tap on Installous App
Once you’re inside Installous, you can see the categories of apps listed on the left. There is also a Search button on the top bar to search for specific apps.
The Installous App
Installous is run and maintained by regular people that are working hard to bring you a great and easy way to try apps before you buy. As a result of the grass roots basis of the program, it can be frequently out of service due to high traffic. Always be patient when using things like this and understand that people are working hard to bring you this. If you want to help out, you can always make a donation to those dedicated few bringing you these great services. Just go to http://hackulo.us/ for more details on the app and to donate.
If you get this to work drop a comment below and let us know what device and version you ran it on. And remember… if you find an app you like, spend a few bucks to buy the real version from the App Store. Keep app makers cranking out quality apps.
Applanet Still Down
If you are reading this post then you are probably well aware that Applanet has been down for some time now. It’s still unknown exactly when the service will be up and running but rumor has it that it’s down in preparation for a new and improved version that has been slated to be released for some time now.
In the meantime, we are reviewing a few other options for online app repsitories and will post an article with some of our favorites soon. Sit tight and keep checking back frequently.
UPDATE: We have added a link to another app similar to Applanet but with better availability called BlackMarket Alpha. Check it out here…
More Free Apps!
Since everybody loves free apps, here’s another way to get some free Android goodness into your phone.
There’s a website called 4Shared.com that is a general online file repository, which is a fancy way for saying a place where people can upload files online and leave them for others to download. It consists of all kinds of files, but we’ll be focusing on the Android apps.
From your phone’s web browser, go to 4Shared.com. You will be presented with a basic search bar. Here you’re going to type the name of the file you’re looking for, but you have to be very particular about how you type it. Android apps all end with the extension “.apk” so you have to type the filename followed by the “.apk” extension. For example, if you were going
4Shared Home Page
to look for Z4Root you would type z4root.apk (don’t worry about capitalization).
Sometimes you still won’t get a hit on the file which means you’ll have to try some different variations on the filename. Typically, this means putting an underscore ( _ ) in between some of the words in the title. So for example, if angrybirds.apk didn’t come up, I would try angry_birds.apk. Since 4Shared.com is just a big warehouse of apps, it can’t really interpret what you’re looking for as well as if you were searching in the Android Market. This just means you have to have a little creativity in trying out file names. Of course, if nothing is working, it could also simply mean that that file has not been uploaded to the site.
Search Results
When you find a file you’re looking for, you may find a whole list of files that have been uploaded. Usually they will have a number near the name indicating the version of the app. Typically, it would be beneficial to download whichever one appears to be the latest app. Just keep in mind that if you download the file and it doesn’t seem to work right, you may be better off uninstalling it and going back and downloading an older version. Sometimes different versions were originally intended for different models of phones or different versions of Android. Also, when selecting a particular file, you an also see the number of times it’s been downloaded. I’ve found that the versions with the higher number of downloads are usually a safer bet.
Waiting for Download Link to Appear
After you click on the file you’re looking for, the next screen will show a message saying “Your Download will be ready in 20 seconds” and have a count down timer. Sometimes that countdown can be up to 320 seconds. They only do this to slow you down so that you will buy a paid membership to the site and be able to download without waiting. Once that countdown ends, a link will appear. Click on it and your download should begin.
One of the benefits to using a site like 4Shared.com is that you can find apps that aren’t in the Android Market. For example, Z4root is not (at the time of this article) on the Android Market so the only place you will find is in file sharing sites such as this.
As is the case anytime you’re installing apps that did not come from the Android market, make sure you have some kind of spyware and malware security installed on your phone because you never know what you’re really getting.
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