Technology. Well it was a step up for me anyway. We got a Irrigation Kit for the gardens and it is amazing. Just turn on the outside tap and various gardens around the back yard are being watered. Love it!
People have been playing some havoc in our cul-de-sac recently so we are putting in CCTV Security Camera’s to see who we can catch and the Police can deal with them.
Cell phones. On Android I have been using Viber for calls and text messages with Wi-Fi. Recently I have started using Swipe(Swype) keyboards and the best I have found is TouchPal and it has a very efficient dictionary etc.
• The swype is easy with a bit of practice. • • Panecal is the calculator I like.
• Shot Control is an interesting camera application.
• NZ Metservice for New Zealand weather.
• Firefox is pretty good too for Android phones.
• Jota Text Editor (Free version) is handy.
• Bible KJV – great for finding verses very fast. Copy, paste and share are good too.
• TuneIn Radio is great for listening to international radio stations.
• ColorNote is good for those notes. I use this for my shopping list and other things. And as I go around the supermarket I just look at my cell phone, see whats next to get and when I find it a simple touch and that item is checked off the shopping list and then I move on to the next item. All the shopping is done and I am not tempted to buy other things.
I greatly dislike the lock on my cell phone. You know on the latest phones it should be that ring you pull up. So I downloaded No Lock from Play Store and it disables it and no problems. Its great.
• gStrings for tuning your guitar. Works great for me and I checked with friends and they are using it too.
• PowerAmp is my preferred music player.
• Wikipedia. Trade Me (New Zealand auction site) Stuff (New Zealand News) are available too.
• Where’s My Droid? Good for tracking down a lost or stolen phone. I haven’t really used this but you may want to download it and have a go. The theory is good.
• PowerToggles is an awesome application that has those important functions like 3G Volume Wi-Fi etc in the Pull Down Drawer. I use this often as it makes things easy to reach and is very helpful.
I have only recently been using Android phones, before that I always had a cheap phone that did the basics. These new phones are amazing.
• SoundHound is amazing. I wanted to know a song playing on a cassette tape and it was short but I played it and held my cell phone to the stereo speaker and after a short search it found the song title etc. I sang into it and it gave me the title. Very efficient – this came with my HTC.
• Dropbox is useful for storing images and such. I don’t use it much but others like it.
I am really looking forward to the CCTV Security Camera’s – they are useful and exactly what I need.
James M Sandbrook.
26th of November, 2012.