JiWire Free Wi-Fi Finder

There is an ongoing joke I have with many of my friends and colleagues. They say that I’m fueled solely by two things: coffee and WiFi…and I’ll be the first to admit that I can hardly live without either one of those necessities. While this Android app won’t help in the caffeine department, it can make sure that I’m connected to the web everywhere that I go.

It’s called the Free Wi-Fi Finder, suitably enough, and it’s provided by the good people at JiWire. On the surface, it might not seem like all that useful a tool. After all, if you already have an Android phone with Wi-Fi, you can just start looking around for hotspots on your own. However, this app is actually a lot more useful when you find yourself among unfamiliar territory, particularly when you’re traveling overseas and don’t have the usual wireless data connection you have back home.

Scanning For Nearby Access Points

The home screen for this app is clean and straightforward, giving you four possible options: Wi-Fi Scanner, Free Wi-Fi Near Me, Search Wi-Fi Directory, and Favorites.

Homescreen on Free Wi-Fi Finder

The first of these isn’t the most useful thing in the world. As previously mentioned, you can just use the native Wi-Fi utility on your Android phone and search accordingly. That said, the graphical interface is nice, showing the nearby Wi-Fi access points as “blips” on a radar screen. There is the “list” layout available too, if you prefer.

Offline Directory of Verified Free Hotspots

But that’s not the main reason why you’d want to get this app. The Wi-Fi radio in your smartphone is only so strong and it will not be able to see every hotspot that is reasonably close to you. This is especially true if you find yourself amidst a concrete jungle of a major metropolitan area.

Hotspot Directory on Free Wi-Fi Finder

The much more powerful aspect of this Free Wi-Fi Finder app is its extensive hotspot directory. This information is available to you when you are offline too, complete with the ability to search through the directory to see what Wi-Fi access points are nearby. This isn’t just for the United States either, as there are over 150,000 verified hotspots listed in 144 countries around the world. That’s fantastic for international travelers.

The directory can be viewed on a map or on a list, and you can search for available hotspots based on an address of your choosing. This helps with some pre-planning too when it comes to choosing where you’ll be heading on your trip. The hotspots can also come with details like a phone number and driving directions, as well as the ability to filter by location type. Don’t want to see the hotspots in restaurants and cafes, sticking to government buildings and libraries instead? Not a problem.

The Internet Should Be Free

It’s not perfect, but it really can be quite the lifesaver when you’re desperate for some mobile Internet. Seeing how the app itself is free, there’s no reason not to have this as part of your repertoire, both at home and abroad. If you don’t have an unlimited wireless data plan on your Android smartphone, this can be a great way to save on those data costs too!

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CamScanner for iOS

If you ask any book publisher, library or archivist, they will tell you decisively: Paper is out.

Documents of all kinds are going digital. In fact, digitizing paper documents is already a multi-million dollar industry. Large, small, public, and private companies are all trading in their archaic paper-based filing systems for database-driven digital equivalents.

But, there didn’t seem to be a personal solution for digitizing documents. There are plenty of “syncing” services and “cloud based” accounts that can help an individual organize files that are already digital, but has anyone come up with a quick, easy way to transform paper docs into digital form? Do I really need a giant scanner, drivers and a desktop computer to digitize something as small and basic as a receipt, business card or 1-pager?

Thanks to CamScanner — no, you don’t.

With CamScanner’s pocket-sized solution, you can digitize your personal or work documents with many of the same robust features as expensive, high-end scanning software. CamScanner makes brilliant use of the camera and software capabilities of your iOS device to image, adjust, scan, and send your paper-based documents with a streamlined step-by-step process.

Seriously, this app is sweet.

Digitizing With CamScanner

CamScanner’s process is very simple. In the example below, I take a paper receipt from the local Apple store and end up with a sharp, searchable PDF in about 20 seconds.

Step 1 is to simply take a picture of the entire paper document. It helps to make sure your picture is not crooked or dimly-lit, but amazingly, CamScanner can correct crookedness and adjust the brightness and contrast of your document in later steps. The important part it step 1 is to make sure you capture the complete document — including all four corners in the photo.

Step 1 : Imaging a CamScanner document

Once the photo of the document is taken, CamScanner allows you to rotate the document and identify the corners and edges. CamScanner does a very good job of guessing the correct orientation, and further adjustments can be made easily with your fingertips.

Step 2: Straightening a CamScanner document

Then, you have an opportunity to adjust the brightness and contrast of the document. Documents taken in dim light can be “brightened” and hard-to-read documents can have their contrasted increased to bring better clarity and readability.

Step 3 of scanning a CamScanner document

Repeat this process for each page. Once you’re finished, your document becomes a PDF and is stored within the CamScanner app, where it can be synced with a variety of services (DropBox, Evernote, etc.), emailed or even faxed. (The fax feature incurs a small fee, but having a fax machine in your pocket is pretty impressive.)

Step 4 of scanning a CamScanner document

Why Not Just Take A Normal Picture?

Some iOS owners may point out that you can already take a picture of a document with an iPhone, iPad or iPod. But CamScanner’s ease of use, it’s compatibility with popular file storage services and its multi-page and fax capabilities make it well worth the modest $5 price tag.

One robust technical feature of CamScanner involves Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This technology — which is usually reserved for high-end industrial document scanning services — enables CamScanner to recognize the words within the document and allow for easy keyword searching. In other words, it “reads” the document, and includes the information that it “read” so that when you search your document for words such as “receipt,” “contract” or “proposal,” it will show you exactly where those words appear.

CamScanner+ and CamScanner Pro

The Apple store currently has two CamScanner apps: CamScanner+ and CamScanner Pro. After careful comparison, it looks like there’s no discernible difference between the two: They have the same price, release date, version number and features. They also have similar raving reviews within iTunes.

There are new apps coming out every day, but CamScanner is a truly impressive and exceptional newcomer. The potential for saved time, easy document sharing, paperless organization and faxing from your pocket make it one of the best in iOS.

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MyBackup Pro

My smartphone is my life. It has everything on there. It’s from that Galaxy S that I check my schedule, send my text messages, update my Twitter, and fling fowl at some thieving swine. I can’t imagine the horror of losing my phone and, more importantly, the data that it contains. That’s why it is so important to have a proper backup system in place.

Granted, most of the data that I have on my Android smartphone is automatically backed up to the Google servers, but there’s all kinds of other data that isn’t. And you can never have too many backup contingency plans. One of the more powerful backup apps for Android is called, appropriately enough, MyBackup Pro and it is being offered as the “easiest backup for Android.”

Easy Way to Backup Your Phone

A backup solution, no matter how robust, isn’t going to be very useful if its utter complexity deters you from actually using it. Thankfully, that’s not the case with this app.

MyBackup Pro Home Screen

After installing and loading it, you’re shown that very simple home screen. There are just five options there and they’re all very self-explanatory. You have the option of backing up your data locally to your phone’s SD memory or backing it up to the servers of Rerware, the developers of MyBackup Pro. That’s included in the price of the app.

Both options have their pros and cons, of course, so it’s up to you which one you want to use. In either case, the backup process couldn’t be easier.

Data and Applications & Media

The packets of backup data are roughly cut up into two batches. First, you can backup the phone “Data.” In this batch, you can toggle the backing up of such data as your call log, text messages (SMS), system settings, dictionary, and music playlist.

MyBackup Pro - Data Backup

The other batch is called “Applications & Media.” This is where you can save app-specific data, like your progress save data from Angry Birds or the account data you have saved on eBuddy. You can back up all the app-specific data or you can cherry-pick which apps to back up. It is also in this batch that you can backup your photos.

The amount of time it takes to create the backup file will depend on how much data you want to back up, of course, but I found the process to be pretty speedy overall.

Restoration and Scheduling Too

Of course, a backup solution makes no sense if you can’t restore that data. Restoring your data is much the same kind of process as the backing up your data, except, of course, you choose “Restore” from the main menu. It will ask which data file you’d like to use and then you can let the software do its thing.

You might forget to do your backups on a periodic basis, so that’s why it’s good to also see a “Schedule” option in there. As with the manual backup, you can cherry-pick what you want to backup and where you want the save file to go. It really couldn’t be easier.

If you’re not sure if you want to spend the $4.99 on the “Pro” version of this app, there is a free version that gives you a 30-day trial. In either case, you don’t need to root your Android phone to get it to work. I’d say it’s five bucks well spent.

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The Big Change iOS app

David Campell once said that “discipline is remembering what you want.” The quote carries a lot of truth in just a few words. Returning your focus to larger goals is a daily effort in discipline. In fact, in today’s age of smartphones, rapid-fire communication, and absurdly busy schedules, it has become even harder to keep your long-term goals and aspirations in mind. Ever-changing priorities, schizophrenic work settings, and the never-ending battle of work-life balance can often distract you from your bigger plans and reduce your thinking to the problems and tasks of the day, hour, or minute. Whether you’re pursuing higher education, planning your dream business or just trying to hang on to your New Year’s resolutions, it’s a struggle just to keep your aspirations in mind and in order.

Big Change, a brand new iOS app, can rescue you from daily dilemmas and distractions by organizing your long-term goals, recording measurable progress, and setting up rewards for completion. In terms of staying disciplined and “remembering what you want,” Big Change is a fantastic aid for any life goal. Rather than struggling internally with neglecting your long-term goals and indulging yourself with spending/eating/drinking, you can create an avenue to both meet your long-term goals and truly earn well-deserved rewards that you’ve programmed into the Big Change app.

When you first download Big Change, you set up accounts to accept the self-set cash rewards for each milestone that brings you closer to your goal. It doesn’t involve any actual transactions or bank accounts; it’s just a way to reward yourself and keep yourself accountable (no pun intended). These accounts can be for a very specific reward — like a new bike — or they can simply be a general fund to be spent however you’d like.

2 reward accounts set up in in Big Change

Your next step towards using Big Change to organize and motivate is to set up specific goals. Big Change offers templates for common goal areas such as spending, exercise, and weight loss, but it also allows you to create custom goals that can consist of whatever personal aspirations you have, no matter how unusual they are.

3 goals within the Big Change iOS app

Each goal also allows you to specify a monetary goal and a smaller monetary reward every time you get a step closer to your achievement. You can determine where this “earned” money goes buy choosing which Big Change account to accept the reward. Don’t worry, the app never asks or or requires any real bank account information. It simply allows to to truly earn some of those purchases with self-specified goals. You do the actual transactions separately, on the honor system of course.

After that, measuring your progress is as simple as touching a single “Record Progress” button for every workout, study session, pound lost or dollar saved. Big Change will do the rest, and motivate you with clear progress charts showing how far you’ve come and how far you have yet to go before you meet your goals.

Tracking your progress towards your goals in Big Change

So, if you’re having trouble planning your long-term goals, starting the path towards your achievements, measuring your progress or finishing strong, Big Change can help create change, both in your personal habits as well as you bank account.

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HootSuite for Android

There are literally thousands of apps available through the Android Market and they range from silly games to stock tickers. Some are more useful than others, but if you’re actively engaged in social media, one of the best apps to manage your online social activities is HootSuite. This is no ordinary Twitter client.

For starters, it can handle much more than just Twitter. This is a tool designed to handle your social networking from one convenient location. In addition to Twitter, HootSuite can be used for Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Ping.fm, WordPress, MySpace, and mixi. There are always plans to add more networks and protocols from the HootSuite team, so this list is never quite complete. Not surprisingly, there is support here for multiple accounts, too, though the free version is limited to five social profiles. A HootSuite Pro account is required to get beyond the limit of five.

Works In Tandem With Desktop Client

While you will need to install HootSuite for Android locally on your Android device of choice, the desktop variant does not require a local installation; instead, it runs inside your browser as a web-based app. You get the same kind of functionality, but with a more robust interface.

This also means that, in addition to your account information with the various social networks, you will need to sign up for a free account with HootSuite. When you do, all the information is automatically synchronized between the desktop client and the mobile client. There is an app for iOS too, which will also synchronize with your data.

Additional Features and Functions

For my part, it’s already pretty handy that I’m able to handle my multiple online presences without having to switch between apps. There are other major advantages too.

HootSuite Home Feed

The main timeline is easy enough to read, but you can also swipe through each of the pages as if they were the “columns” of the desktop client. This includes support for mentions, DMs, lists, and so on. When you tap to reply, you can choose which profile you’d like to use as well.

Like the desktop client, the Android version of HootSuite also allows for more powerful features. For instance, there are image uploads, to be sure, but you can also schedule tweets and Facebook updates into the future. While you can’t manage it from the mobile client, HootSuite also allows for RSS syndication, complete with customization of how you want the updates to be formatted and how frequently the RSS feed should be checked.

Foursquare on HootSuite

Attached images are automatically displayed when a tweet is read in full screen, as is the geotargeting information that comes along with things like Foursquare check-ins. The Twitter “conversation” can be followed too and there is even a mobile browser built into the HootSuite Android client, so links can be opened without opening a separate web browser.

Considering the remarkably robust feature set, HootSuite for Android is easily one of my favorite apps and it’s one that I use every day. The limit to five social networks is a bit of a downer, but the upgrade to a Pro account is only $5.99 a month.

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(Photo: endopack / iStockphoto)

The modern office contains enough computer equipment to power the first Moon mission, but enough seething resentment to power World War Three. A downtown skyscraper is a gleaming testament to mankind’s achievements, but all karmic monks see is a screaming black hole holding a knife. The combination of “having to deal with other people” and “that’s enough to cause problems, actually” means the average worker has to restrain more negative emotions than Arkham Asylum.

We all know the cliche office annoyances, like the idiot talking about how hard they’re working instead of actually doing it, or refusing to refill the coffee pot (if you’re in one of the four remaining offices which doesn’t go to Starbucks instead), but those aren’t real office annoyances.

Those are assholeries and basic failures to respect other people that just happen to occur on the clock.

We’re looking at five uniquely office-based annoyances.

1. “It’ll only take a minute.”

This phrase has generated more homicidal impulses than Skynet, and at least Terminators get to kill people as part of their job. This emotional bottle to the face is only deployed after they ask if you have a moment and you (politely) tell them no, you’re busy. Then they say “I’m going to blatantly ignore you to your face and then expect you to do things for me.” But, a sentence that long requires effort and self-awareness they lack, so instead they insist “It’ll only take a minute.”

They are telling you that you’re a monkey. You already know they need something by this point, and instead of letting you finish and get back to them when you can help, they’ve decided that their “saving the bother of waiting a minute” is more important than your “actually getting things done.” In a just world that phrase would be a spell which ties their hands and feet together. Then gives you a tazer and “just a minute” to help them learn the error of their ways.

2. Monday Morning Empty Inquiries

The human voice has hundreds of hidden channels. Intonation can turn the same phrase into a greeting, an insult, a demand, an invitation, a sexual suggestion or a declaration of insanity. And that’s just “Hello.” And the one tone which sounds worse than screaming is the irrhetorical question. A rhetorical question is one which doesn’t require an answer. An irrhetorical question is one where they do wait for you to answer, but it’s irrelevant because they only asked so they can follow up with their own answer to their question. This happens every Monday morning.

3. Themed Memo Pads

Even in a world more electronic than R2D2, paper is still useful. The yellow sticky lets you leave notes for someone who isn’t there – the best way to talk to someone because neither of you have to waste time or think on the spot. And just like bees say in the hive, anything other than “yellow and sticky” is a terrible idea.

Pretty pink borders, paw prints, Garfield or glitter converts every message into “Here’s another annoyance!” Their defenders will say that they’re just a bit of fun. Unless they said it the same way they leave notes, in which case they’d say it in a high squeaking voice like they’ve just huffed helium. And they’ll be taken exactly as seriously. It’s unfortunate, appalling, and utterly unavoidable that the human brain still judges the hell out of people and things based on their appearance. So, if your note says URGENT but also has cartoon kittens on it, you’ll be subconsciously filed under “When I have a minute. After New Years.”

4. More Than 2 Anything On The Desk

Decorating your desk isn’t just a right, it’s a psychological self-defense mechanism. You might not have walls, or even a cubicle (if you’re unfortunate enough to work in an open-plan office/zero-privacy psychological experiment), but you can control what’s on your desk. Well, you can’t really, because most of it is work and files you wouldn’t’ have chosen in a hundred years. But those little comics, paperweights and office toys are yours!

As long as you only have one of each.

A few lunatics start armies of toys, collections of comics, or other arrays of things that aren’t work. And that’s not us being insulting – ten toys lined up along a desktop actually means “lunatic” in various sign languages. A few personal touches mean its your area – a whole collection advertises that you really don’t want to be there and spend every possible second thinking of ways to avoid work.

5. You

If you’ve been reading through this thinking “Yeah, I hate all those other people,” you’re part of the problem. And the majority of people think you’re one of those too. The ideal office would be a desk, a computer, and e-mail instantly answered by other people when you need something. Remember that everyone else is stuck in there with you too, and think about what you might be doing to annoy them.

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