Tag Archives

App Highlights: Twilight

By Sunday, March 1, 2015 0 Mobile , , Permalink 0

According to research, exposure to blue light near bedtime is bad.

Twilight is a simple app that makes your device screen adapt to the time of the day. Using the app is like applying a red filter to the screen, filtering emitted blue light from reaching your eyes. The app uses your location, to adjust the filter intensity to the sun cycle, based on local sunset and sunrise times.

App Highlights is a recurring series. From time to time, I highlight one Android app that I found useful. Feel free to suggest apps for me to highlight, but be advised that I focus on apps that I actually use.

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App Highlights: Yatse, the XBMC / Kodi Remote

By Monday, January 5, 2015 0 Mobile , , , Permalink 1

Yatse is my Kodi (formerly XBMC) remote Android app of choice.

Kodi is a free and open source media center application. It’s what I currently use on my dedicated HTPC computer in the living room (via OpenELEC).

The Yatse Remote app allows me to control the media center from my phone. It’s so good doing that, that ever since I installed it, I never needed to pull out the HTPC keyboard / mouse!

There are plenty of alternative Kodi remote apps, including an official one from the XBMC team. I briefly used the official app a while ago (maybe early 2013?), and got quickly frustrated.

The Yatse app is free, with a $6.99 unlocker for extra features (and developer support). I never had any need for the extra features, so I purchased the upgrade only to support the developer.

Yatse also has various plugins for even more features!

App Highlights is a recurring series. From time to time, I highlight one Android app that I found useful. Feel free to suggest apps for me to highlight, but be advised that I focus on apps that I actually use.

Continue Reading…

App Highlights: Pushbullet

By Sunday, December 7, 2014 0 Mobile , , , Permalink 1

Pushbullet is the missing link between your mobile devices and other computers. With its various mobile apps and browser extensions, it finally allows you to move between mobile and desktop with ease.

The features that make Pushbullet one of the first things I install include:

  • Notification sync: the mobile app sends notifications to the desktop, so I don’t need to pick up the phone while working on my laptop.
  • Push links (and files, and notes): push something from the desktop to the phone, instantly. no more emailing-to-self nonsense!
  • SMS from desktop: send and reply to SMS messages from the laptop, without picking up the phone!

App Highlights is a recurring series. From time to time, I highlight one Android app that I found useful. Feel free to suggest apps for me to highlight, but be advised that I focus on apps that I actually use.

Continue Reading…

App Highlights: Our Groceries

By Sunday, November 2, 2014 0 Mobile , , , Permalink 1

Our Groceries is a super-useful app that keeps multiple lists synchronized between multiple devices and users.

The obvious use-case, as hinted by the name of the app, is sync’ing grocery lists between family members. This apps does it in a simple and intuitive way!

App Highlights is a recurring series. From time to time, I highlight one Android app that I found useful. Feel free to suggest apps for me to highlight, but be advised that I focus on apps that I actually use.

Continue Reading…

Android Call Logs Backup

By Sunday, September 16, 2012 0 Mobile , , , , Android Backup Project Permalink 0

The call logs on Android devices are stored in a database on the device, holding your records of incoming and outgoing calls. At this time, Android has no built-in mechanism that synchronizes this database with some online cloud service (compared, for instance, to the contacts data, that can be synchronized to your Google Contacts account).

If you consider your call logs something of any value, you will probably want to make sure this data is covered by some backup scheme – and this is what I am going to deal with in this post.

I use the Call Logs Backup & Restore app, which is free on Google Play store.

This post is written using v3.02 of the app.

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Android SMS Backup

By Sunday, September 16, 2012 0 Mobile , , , , Android Backup Project Permalink 0

On Android devices, SMS messages are stored in a database on the device, with no built-in way to sync them with some online cloud service (compared to the contacts for example, that may be synchronized to your Google Contacts account).

For this reason, it is worthwhile to put a little effort into setting up a backup scheme for SMS messages – which is the goal of this post.

I use the SMS Backup & Restore app, which is free on Google Play store, along with its free network add-on (which is required for the E-mail and Dropbox-upload features).

This post was written using v5.93 of the app.

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Android Apps & Data Backup with Titanium Backup

By Saturday, September 15, 2012 0 Mobile , , , , Android Backup Project Permalink 0

Backing up an Android device is a broad term, that entails various levels of backup that cover multiple aspects of the data on your Android device, using different tools.

In this post I write about using the Titanium Backup app (or “TB”), which is available to download from Google Play store for free. It also has a paid pro version. TB requires a rooted device to work properly.

TB allows you to perform a user-level apps & data backup – including all (user/system) apps and their data, but excluding low-level stuff like the kernel and the Android stack. This is very useful when changing ROMs and wiping the device data in the process, as it allows restoring the apps on the new ROM including the state and data related to each app.

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