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Stream or Download Movies for Free on Android or iOS
With so many video formats and devices out there, sometimes it’s hard to figure out the best way to watch movies when you’re on the go. With Netflix seeming to increase it’s rates on an hourly basis, it’s great to have an alternative. A new website has made the process much easier no matter what device you’re using. And the best part is you don’t need a computer to do it!
Movieonhand.com is a website that you can view on your desktop or laptop computer as well as your iOS device (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) and Android phone. Once you punch in the web address, you’ll see a basic home screen with a search bar at the top and then a list of years at the bottom. You can search their catalog or browse based on the year the movie was released.
Search by Year
For this example, we’re typing ‘X-Men’ into the search bar. When we have the results, we select a movie and then see various viewing options. We can stream from a few different locations and we can also download directly to our device. The download option will take you to a file share site where the movie is being stored at. Occasionally the link download link will take you to a page that says the movie you’re looking for was removed. Not much you can do about this…you’ll just have to keep looking. It’s great to have the option to stream when you have a data connection or to download to watch when you don’t have internet access.
Search Bar
Download to iOS Devices
Depending on your device, the download process is a little different. For the PC, it’s a straightforward affair. If you’re on an Apple iOS device, you’ll need another application first. Follow the link below to download Downloads Lite from the App store…
Click Stream or Download to view
Once you have Downloads Lite installed, open the program and use it to navigate to Moviesonhand.com through the built in browser. Go through the same process to get to the download or stream options and select download. It should take you to the download location (usually megaupload.com). It may require you to wait until a download counts down before the download link appears. Click and the app will start the download process. Once this is done, you can go to the files tab and there’s your movie! You also have the option for moving the video file into your Photos folder so it’ll be easier to find.
Download to Android
Luckily, the Android download process is much simpler since it doesn’t require any other apps to work. Just follow all the steps before and click on the download link from moviesonhand.com. Next, click the download link once it appears on Megaupload.com and the download should start. That’s it…once the download completes you should be able to find it in your videos or gallery.
Movieonhand.com is a great tool for getting a huge number of movies on your device or for streaming and is a great alternative when Netflix keeps jacking up the rates. Occasionally the format may not be the best for your given device but in the end it’s a great option to have especially when you’re on the go.
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 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.
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.
Secure Your Droid
Once you get out there and start downloading apps like a madman (or madwoman) you’re going to be opening yourself up for potential attacks from hackers. It’s possible that some of the apps you download could be malware that can do bad things to your phone, especially if you’re downloading from somewhere other than the official Android Market.
There are several ways to secure your device but my favorite has always been Lookout Mobile Defender. This app will run in the background on your device and will scan every new app you install and tell you if it’s safe. It can also do sweeps of your phone to search for anything that shouldn’t be there as well as help you locate your phone if you lose it. Another great feature is doing regular backups in case your phone’s memory gets wiped so you won’t lose anything. The best part is that the app is free if you only want to scan your apps and want the missing device location service. For others features they will charge you a small amount so it’s up to you if you want the full monty or not.
Click the link below from your phones browser to download it directly from the Android market…
http://market.android.com/details?id=com.lookout
There are plenty of other security apps on the market (like Norton Antivirus) but I’ve always had great success with Lookout. If you have any other apps to recommend for security, drop a comment below.
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