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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.
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 Droid Phones!!
If you haven’t had a chance yet, we just wanted to share with you some great deals available from one of our main sponsors, SGTWireless. Right now they’re offering tons of awesome free phones for Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Nextel. Some of the current deals include the killer Droid 2 Global on Verizon (with a suction dashboard/windshield mount and a Motorola Multimedia Station, a combined $80) all for FREE! We know how much you all love free things (free apps, free movies, free music) so why not free phones!?
The truth is we put out a ton of info for our readers for free and it wouldn’t be possible without the support of great companies like SGTWireless. There are a lot of companies and groups out there who are charging people for the kind of information we provide for free. Sponsors help us to make sure we never have to ask our readers for anything but their support. Please take a moment and click on their add on this page and you’ll not only be supporting Hackmondo.com but also saving a ton of cash and getting a great phone all at the same time. What’s not to love about that?!
Root HTC Evo 4G Running Gingerbread 2.3
The guys at AndroidAuthority.com have posted a great tutorial on rooting your HTC Evo 4G running Gingerbread (aka Android 2.3). This process is just slightly more involved than the simple rooting methods in the past like Z4Root but is also one of the only ways so far to do it. They have made a great tutorial video they posted on YouTube and we have had confirmation from one of our readers that this method does work and at least for them, did not result in “bricking” the phone. Here’s the video to check out and head over to AndroidAuthority.com for more details and lots of other great Android info.
Free Android Apps from Blackmarket Alpha
For those of you looking for a way to fill the void left by the downfall of Applanet, fear not. Blackmarket Alpha is looking to fill the gap. While not as elegant in design as Applanet, it is proving to be much more reliable…that is to say it works, which is more than Applanet can say. Click on the link to get the file straight to your phone…
Click Here for Blackmarket Alpha
The app is simple enough to use. When you run it the first time you will see tabs for “Applications,” “Games,” and “Installed.” The first two take you to more categories in their respective areas. The apps are all listed alphabetically so the search tools are a little limited. There is the option to also search for a particular app by name which is useful.
As always, remember that the point of these types of apps are to try BEFORE YOU BUY! Always do whatever you can to support app developers by buying apps you like. Let app makers make a living at it so we can sit back and enjoy more app goodness.
HackMondo 