The Most Outrageous Apps for Your Android Tablet

While your Android powered tablet is capable of a lot of useful things, the best things in life are silly, impractical and extremely funny. And your tablet comes out in blazing colors on this front too. Let us look at some of the apps which will make your friends extremely embarrassed, shock your colleagues, and make you roll on the floor with laughter. Caution: Use these at your own risk, we take no responsibility if you get fired from work, or get chucked out of class, or end up having too many friends who are making secret plans to slowly and painfully annihilate you.

Fart Button

Remember the time when one of the funniest moments in class, as a kid, was someone farted? Well, it was funny for all except for that person. Well, you can relive those days with the Fart Button. Like the name suggests, It's just that - a Big Fart Button! Press the Big Fart Button and play over 30 different random farting sounds. Its simple yet hilarious. You get bonus points if you do this during an examination or in a team meeting. Just remember to give your tablet to someone else. Make sure you turn up your Media Volume to hear the farts in all their glory. Simulate fart in public places and do disgusting and exhilarating jokes to your friends. Now, if they could include smells in this, and it would be a truly evil application.

Burps and Sneeze

All the talk of table manners must have really made us feel so deprived of the natural phenomenon of burping loudly after a huge satisfying meal. While in some countries, it is extremely disgusting, in other places, it is seen as a compliment to the chef. Whichever part of the world you are in, go ahead, scandalize your dinner buddies with the Burps and Sneeze application on your Android powered tablet. Burps and Sneeze makes your tablet burp, sneeze and cough with different realistic and funny sounds! A timer provides a time-delayed burp action! Just imagine your friend's reaction when you joke on him by putting the tablet under his chair with enabled timer.

Breaking the screen

This is for all your friends who love playing with your tablet, to the extent that you hardly get time to spend with your new found gadget. One of the most uncomfortable moment for them would be if they caused any damage to your tablet, and the thought of making up for the loss can be extremely scary. Just install Breaking the screen on your tablet, and watch the fun. It's a funny joke that simulate 'breaking the screen' when you touch over the screen. Catch your friends with this prank, and you will not have any more trouble from pesky friends who always want use your tablet.

Liquid Face Lite

All your friends who love to have their photo taken just give them a dose of Liquid Face Lite. It is an awesome photo app that allows you to stretch, pinch and twist faces in crazy ways. You can them post these evil photos on Facebook and tag them for good measure.

So, go ahead and have fun. After all, no fun is fun if someone doesn’t get embarrassed.

Best Games for Your Android tablet

A Tablet with its large screen is a great device to play games on. Add an Android operating system to it, and it becomes one of the best devices for gaming, keeping you entertained for hours. The Android eco system has several thousand games for you to choose from, and we help you find the finest among them, so that you can start off with a bang.

Angry Birds

This is one of the most popular game arcade and action games on Android and indeed features a very challenging physics-based gameplay and hours of replay value. Each of the 225 levels requires logic, skill, and force to solve. The game involves the survival of the Angry Birds which is at stake. The player has to dish out revenge on the greedy pigs who stole their eggs, using the unique powers of each bird to destroy the pigs’ fortresses. There are several seasons available, for instance a theme on Christmas and valentine, making this game even more fun.

Bubble Blast 2

For a game to be not just interesting, but addictive, it needs to be built on a simple premise, yet not make the player look dumb. Bubble Blast 2 is a puzzle game in which you burst bubbles to trigger a chain reaction in order to eliminate them. There are two game modes are available - Puzzle mode with 1500 levels and Arcade mode to play freely. The large screen of your Android tablets makes it even more fun, and you will get hooked on to bursting bubbles.

Slice It

Slice it is a puzzle game, where you slice different figures into the same ratio (or surface area). This makes you reconsider your love (or lack of) for math and makes you fall in love with the subject all over again. Once you slice, you can't stop slicing! It features 140 different stages with more stages to be added, and also provides helpful hints when you get stuck. So, get ready to make friends with Squares, triangles, and rhombuses.

City Jump

City Jump is all about executing mysterious tasks, jumping between buildings to avoid obstacles on the wall and to kill all enemies on the way. Join the super hero in red as he climb up walls avoiding robots, phantoms and mysterious characters in his path. This addicting game has three modes for you to pick from that will keep you coming back for more.

Air Control Lite

If you have ever read about or seen a live Air Traffic Control room, you would have a fair idea about how stressful, yet Important their job is. It requires high level of concentration for long hours. With Air Control Lite, you can live the life of an air traffic controller. In this simple yet addictive drawing game you take on the role of Air Traffic Controller. It is your job to direct airplanes to runways while avoiding collisions. Go ahead, make your childhood dream come true.

These games should just get you started on your journey of exploring the games in the Android market. If you come across other great games, let us know in the comments.

The Best Paid Apps for Android Tablets

With hundreds of thousands of applications available in the Android market, both free and paid, it can be extremely difficult for one to find the right application for our Android powered tablets. Today, we take a look at the best applications that a few hundred rupees can buy, and why they should take an important place on your device.

Backup - Titanium Backup Pro

We believe that a good backup strategy should be a part of everyone’s routine. Titanium Backup can backup and restore all apps, even protected ones, with their data and their Market link. It can also save phone settings, including the Wi-Fi access point. Pro features include saving the data to a Dropbox account on your tablet, which backs up the data to the cloud. It is definitely the Rs 300 that one would spend on it. Another advantage is that it can uninstall the pesky system apps which Android will not let you uninstall.

Games - The Moron Test

There are literally thousands of games available on the Android market, but The Moron test is one of the best. It asks a series of questions which one needs to answer to progress to the next round. It can be highly addictive and the free version has only one level, while the paid version has five full sections featuring over 500 steps. Other features include seven levels ranging from Moron to Genius, fun characters, sound effects, and music. Best of all? You can brag on Facebook by sharing your best score.

Entertainment - Talking Tom Cat

One of the best reasons to buy an android powered tablet is to impress your friends (apart from the several real reasons to buy one). The best way to do this is introduce them to Tom. Talking Tom repeats everything you say with a funny voice. You can pet him, poke him, you can even grab his tail. Enjoy hours of fun and laughter with Talking Tom. He is especially fun for children of all ages. You can also record your own videos of Tom and share them on YouTube and Facebook, send them by email/MMS or save them to the SD card.

Productivity - Swiftkey Keyboard

With the large screens that the tablets offer, typing is a breeze. However, add an application such as the SwiftKey Keyboard and see your productivity soar. It is an award-winning keyboard app uses AI to make typing on your Android device smart, fast and personal. It can predicts your next word with great accuracy, auto-learns and correct as you type, supports Multi-touch and predicts in two languages. There is a 31-day free trial available on Android Market.

Design - Adwlauncher EX

While the default home screen launcher is pretty slick, the ADWLauncher will make you fall in love with your Android tablet all over again. The Highly Customizable Home replacement application supports hundreds of themes, screens editor to add, remove and swap your desktop screens, customizable main dock with support for fixed shortcuts from 0 to 5, editable desktop icons for applications, shortcuts and folders and lots of settings to play with like colours, animations, sizes etc.

Now that you know what’s the best applications to put your money in, go ahead and explore your tablet, and unleash the power that these apps bring to your device.

How to Secure your Personal Data on a Phone

One of the worst thing that can happen to anyone is today’s world is losing one’s phone. Apart from the monetary loss that one has to deal with, losing all our contacts and personal data can almost be a nightmare. Though we cannot help you in keeping your phone safe, we definitely can help you minimize or negate the loss of your phone by showing how you can secure your personal data.

Backing Up Contacts

With mobile phones having an almost unlimited phonebook and multiple fields allowing you to store not just phone numbers but also other contact information such as email and home addresses, taking up a backup of your phonebook is the very first step to securing your phone. There are two ways to do this, one is to sync your phone to your computer using a USB cable and a PC sync software which come bundled in most phones. This also allows you to backup your SMSs and other information on your phone. It is a good practice to sync your mobile phone with your computer at least every week to ensure that your backed up information is up to date.

Another option, especially for the phones which are not supported by a PC sync software is to go in for a SIM card reader which will display all your contact information from your SIM card and allow you to store them on your computer.

Backing Up Your Memory Card

Taking a backup is just the first step. Another important area of concern in your personal information such as photos, recordings or videos that you may have on your phone. It is a good practice to take regular backup of the data on to your computer using a USB cable or card reader which are available in the market. Additionally, once you have the backup, you can delete the media content from your phone so that unauthorized persons do not have access to your personal data. There are also several cloud based backup solutions which are available, and you may consider using them too.

Securing Your Device

Almost all phones these days have the option to prevent access to your phone using a password. If you have not password protected your phone and SIM card yet, it is time you do that right away. This not only prevents the misuse of your phone, but also prevents unauthorized persons to make use of your SIM card to make calls, thus saving you an inflated bill in addition to losing your cell phone.

Securing Your Memory Card

Securing your phone using a password is just one method of preventing unauthorized access to the data on your memory card. Most phones also have the option to securing your memory card and its content using a password. Make sure that this option is enabled on your device.

Installing and Using A Mobile Tracker

Many phones such as the Accord A32 and A351 have a feature called Mobile Theft Tracker which automatically sends out a preconfigured SMS in case the SIM card is changed on the phone, The SMS contains information of the new mobile number, thus alerting the owner of the thief’s identity, with which he can approach law enforcement officers and help retrieve the instrument. Make sure that you have set this up correctly.

These are just a few ways with which you can secure your personal data and your phone. If you have any suggestions or experiences, let us know in the comments.

Mobile Number Portability – Ensure Your Application Does Not Get Rejected

With the introduction of Mobile Number Portability (MNP), India has joined the increasing number of countries offering this feature. However, in terms of the sheer size of the implementation, India ranks the highest. We had earlier written on the benefits and drawbacks of introducing number portability in India. As per TRAI data, there were 17.11 lakh submissions for change of carrier, out of which a large number of requests were rejected (TRAI did not reveal the exact figures). Let us see what are the reasons that a change of service provider request can be rejected, and how you can avoid it.

Incorrect Unique Porting Code Submitted by Subscriber in the Porting Form

In order to migrate your current mobile number to a new mobile service provider, you need to send an SMS to 1900 in the format PORT ten-digit-mobile-number. First two characters of the Unique Porting Code are Alphabets (denoting the service provider code and service area code) and remaining 6 digits are numerical characters except numeric ‘0’ (zero).The Unique Porting Code allocated to a subscriber shall be valid for a period of fifteen days from the date of request. This Unique Porting Code should be filled in the Porting form without any error. Before submitting the porting request, subscribers should match the actual Unique Porting Code received by SMS, with the Unique Porting Code they have entered in the porting form so that there is no chance of any error.

Non-Completion of 90 days

The subscriber is eligible for porting only if he has completed 90 days from the activation of the existing mobile connection or last porting date of mobile number whichever is applicable. The subscribers must ensure the same before applying for porting.

Existing Contractual Obligations

The Donor operator can reject a porting request if there are subsisting contractual obligations in respect of which an exit clause has been provided in the subscriber agreement but the subscriber has not complied with such exit clause.

Non-Payment of Outstanding Bill

Donor Operator can reject a porting request if there are outstanding payments due from the subscriber by way of pending bill or bills, as the case may be before the date of application for porting. Therefore subscribers must ensure that their last bill is fully paid before applying for porting. They should also attach a copy of the paid bill receipt while applying for porting. In case of prepaid customers, the balance on the number is automatically carried forward, however, it is advisable to have minimal or zero balance at the time of the application.

So, go ahead, enjoy your freedom of choice, but ensure that you read the eligibility conditions carefully before submitting a porting request, and check for the above conditions to ensure a seamless transition to a new carrier.

Snaptu – World of Apps On Your Java Phone

When it comes to mobile phones, all of us want the best of everything. We need our phones to be an extension of our personality and make a statement, and at the same time be uncomplicated. Maybe, that’s where most phones fail. And that’s where Snaptu comes in. What exactly is Snaptu? And how does it help to uncomplicate your mobile phone? Read on to find out!

It’s A Mad App World

In a mobile phone world of App markets, the stark reality is that it all boils down to the operating system. While Android and iPhone users, and to some extent Symbian users are spoilt for choice, the millions of mobile phones users who run on the tried and trusted Java platform are left asking for more. Even though there are some Java games which are immensely popular and fun to play, the lack of an app market for these phones has always been a sore point. However, Snaptu changes this, and brings to millions of mobile phone users the power of Apps on their Java Phone. No matter what phone you have, with Snaptu, you can enjoy the best new mobile apps - fast, easy, and free!

Spoilt For Choice

Snaptu has practically unlimited number of applications thanks to its ability to turn your favorite websites into ultra fast mobile apps that work on your phone. Stay up to date with technology, sports or current affairs with apps such as BBC News Reader, Cricinfo, Engadget, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Mashable, Midday, The Guardian News Reader, and the Reuters News Reader. You can also make best use of your phone’s camera with apps such as Flickr and Picasa, get connected using Twitter and Facebook and organize your daily tasks using the app for Google calendar. If you are looking for some entertainment, then install the Jezebel, MyMovies, Sudoku, or the Tennis.com apps. There is also a Weather Forecast app to ensure that you can plan your trip with the satisfaction of knowing how the weather forecast.

Ease of Use

The best part of using Snaptu is like we mentioned before, its uncomplicated, simple and just works. It can be installed on any phone which has a Java interface and you can experience the mobile internet world like never before. All this without burning a hole in your pocket, by buying an high-end mobile phone with the same features. Because Snaptu is a platform, content providers and application developers have the ability to write an application onetime on Snaptu and then it is deployed across the mobile web and is accessible from almost every mobile phone on the market.

No wonder, Snaptu is installed on almost six million mobile phones. It’s time to get yours.

Getting the best out of your Android device, using apps

With mobile manufacturers finally starting to make affordable Android tablets, there is a new revolution happening and you don’t want to be left out. With the cheapest Android tablets in India such as the Accordpad, we are looking at an explosion of these devices in the next few months. With thousands of applications (Apps) available on the Android ecosystem, it can be a little daunting to get that perfect app. We sift through tens of thousands of apps to find out the ones which are the most relevant and useful applications that Android users must have. The apps featured here do not consume too much of your devices resources and have been tested extensively by thousands of users.

Getting Started

It is important to understand that apps are at the heart of the Android Operating System. So the first thing is to get to know your Apps in and out. Here are five ways to do just that.

Get a Google Account

So, what is the best way to make friends with your new android device? Get a Google Account. This is a no brainer and in fact your android device will literally force you to associate it with a Google Account. If you don’t have one already, creating one is a breeze. However, this is not a bad thing at all. With your device synced with your Google account, you have access to your all your mail and more importantly, your phonebook, contacts and calendar. This is also a good reason for you to clean up those duplicate contacts, and start adding as much info of your contacts in your Google account. Also, start syncing your calendar, bookmarks and search history with your Android device and Google account; you will redefine the limits of productivity.

Cons: You will be sharing your deepest secrets with Google. Though Google’s policy of “Don’t be evil” may be true, if you don’t trust it, get a Google account just to sync your android device online and don’t share any personal information.

Now to cut to the chase. Here is the lit of the top five essential apps.

Appbrain Application Market

The default Android Market app is painful. Finding the right app and installing it is possible only using the device’s market interface. Enter Appbrain, an app built on the Android Market interface but providing a slew of advantages. For instance, you can sync your Appbrain account using your Google account at www.appbrain.com and the website will register your device, and display the list of apps currently installed. The best part? You can search for applications, read reviews and ratings and install/uninstall applications with your browser. All you need is to sync the application on your device with your Appbrain account and it will download, install and also update future releases of the app without any hassle.

Cons: In a few cases, apps which have been selected for installation using the website are not available on the device and the app displays an error similar to the page not found error and cancels installation.

Advanced Task Killer

It is very easy to get hooked on to the apps, get carried away, and end up installing too many apps. With Android supporting multi tasking, it is easy to lose track of currently running apps which can end up becoming a major stain on your device’s resources, drain your battery and take up a huge amount of space on your internal and external memory. The solution? Advanced Task Killer. This nifty application displays a neat list of currently running apps, including itself, and lets you kill (shut down) the apps easily and instantly.

Cons: It is not advisable to kill apps unnecessarily, since some default apps which are required to run by the operating system will restart immediately and use even more resources. Use this app judiciously and you will get the maximum benefit from it.

Fast Uninstaller

By now, you must have figured out what this app does. Yes, it uninstalls other apps, and keeps your device clutter free and your app addictiveness in check. The advantage over the standard uninstaller is that this lets you uninstall multiple apps and saves you the guilt after a session of downloading frenzy.

Cons: This will not let you uninstall apps which come on the device by default. Certain adware included.

Quick System Info PRO

This is one of the best app available in the market and for good reason. It gives you a snapshot of your device including the amount of CPU, ROM and Battery Usage. It even breaks down the information by providing the usage history of each app and gives you an option to kill all running services. You can also change the wi-fi, gps, internet and brightness settings, giving you total control over your device.

Cons: It is easy to get bogged by the information which is provided by this app. Our suggestion is to stick to the basics and take your time in understanding this app.

Studying On The Go

The days when students used to lug a bag full of books are long gone. Most of us can reminiscence about carrying a small sling bag to college and not really studying. Now, even the small bag is soon to be replaced, by a little tablet, the size of a thin magazine. But will it really work as good as advertised? Let’s find out how to best use tablets to study better and more efficiently without breaking your back.

Using It as a PDF Reader

Come exam time, and we can usually find students poring over really heavy books, with a ton of pages, frantically searching through their comments and cramming information. It’s time to put that to rest. A tablet lets you read any number of books in pdf formats and allows you to store thousands of books in its memory. That’s not the only fun part, using applications designed to make your pdf experience delightful, you can highlight texts and paragraphs, bookmark pages for easy reference and search quickly through hundreds of pages for keywords and other terms. There are applications which also read the text aloud so that you can sit back and take notes while the book is being read to you. So, if you have any dog eared manuals and text books, take a long hard look at them, for they will not be around very soon.

Taking Notes on the Go

Another advantage of a tablet is that it is extremely versatile when it comes to jotting down notes and recording lectures. Imagine you are in your classroom, and if you don’t have the patience or the inclination to take down notes at the moment, you can easily record the lecture, tag it with the subject, name of the professor, date and any other information you choose to. You can go back to the audio later and listen to it when you are more focused. You can also share it with your not so regular friends and be the star in your group. The large screen that a tablet has, allows you to type quickly and easily thus making it a great note taking device too.

Getting Organized

Apart from using the tablet as a replacement of your text books, you can become organized. It allows you to create schedules, timetables and to do lists which you can sync and update from any device, be it a phone, a tablet, a laptop or a personal computer. This ensures that you always know when your next class is, and what you need to do before it. Never miss another class, or well, another date. Set reminders about birthdays, anniversaries, first date, or the first time you held hands, just about anything, and you can actually see your life getting untangled.

Look Up Information Quickly

hen you are a student, you have a million questions and absolutely no time to spare for seeking the answers. With a tablet, use your browser to look up information quickly. Also, stay connected by accessing your email and social networking websites to ensure you don’t miss another important email or an update. There are several operators who give free access to online encyclopedia such as Wikipedia etc. go ahead and make use of these opportunities to expand your knowledge base and your horizons.

All Work And No Play

Finally, the most interesting part. The tablet is an extremely capable device when it comes to entertainment. Check out our feature on Time to Take Your Entertainment Primetime. So, once you are done with your studies, you can relax for a while. Now, the sling bag would not let you do that, would it? Or enjoy a novel, right on your tablet.

While a tablet is great to study, remember that it is also easy to get distracted. If you can control your impulses and stick to your schedule, then rest assured, class is not going to be that boring anymore.