Use your Android Device as a Remote - Gmote App pretty damned cool!




Not long ago, my really cool five DVD player unit bit the dust. Finally, one of the DVDs got jammed in the revolving tray and I couldn't shake it out.

This DVD player was a gift and I never quite got the concept of a player that could hold five DVDs to choose from. I could never remember what DVDs were in it and didn't know if someone else took one of my DVDs out and put in one of their own. So, whenever I wanted to watch a DVD I'd have to go over to the unit and open it up to see if the movie I wanted to watch was even in a tray, and if so which tray was it in. Then, I had to again figure out how to rotate the trays so that the one I wanted was in the position to be played next. Usually, I got it wrong and the Pilates video would start with some woman threatening me with physical torment.

Now that I think of it, I'm surprised this DVD player didn't break a long time ago...FROM ME THROWING IT AGAINST THE WALL.

Of course, just after the player broke, my wife wanted to watch a movie. No big deal. I'll just hook up my laptop to the TV and play the DVD through that. Oh crap! That means that every time I want to pause, rewind or stop the movie, I have to get up from the couch and walk over to the computer to execute the command.

Not so fast there, buddy boy. Before hooking up the computer to the TV I went to Google and searched: "using droid as remote."

Yay! Gmote! An app that actually works was a remote for my computer.

So, I downloaded the app to my droid and the server to my laptop and gave it a shot.

It works exactly as promised. It's not a fancy app by any means. It does nothing more than allow you to locate DVDs or music and play, pause, fast forward, control volume, etc. But it worked very well and was easy to install and get running in a matter of minutes.

I was hoping that it would actually work as a mouse for my computer, but nope. Hey wait...I'll search for a droid app that works as a mouse. Hey, there's one...oh and another.

To be continued...

Please check out some of my other sites...just for laughs.

Interactive Lunacy
Cell Phone Reality TV
Click On Comedy
Joking Smoker Cigar Blog
The Dirty Joke Show

Scrabble-like game, Words with Friends now available for Droid




A while back, I was shopping for an iPod as a birthday gift for my wife. When I would want to listen to music I would use my Droid to connect to a radio station, listen to Slacker or music stored on my SD card. My daughter had her iPod and Blackberry. So, my wife wanted her own "music studio" too.

Of course, I couldn't just buy her a really nice MP3 player. No, no. It HAD to be an actual iPod made by Apple. Okay, to please my wife I'll overpay for the exact same product that I could get from a dozen other quality manufacturers.

Oops. My bad. How wrong could I be? Pretty damned.

Even though I had a Droid, and many of my friends had iPhones, I wasn't aware that the iPod Touch was essentially an iPhone without the phone part. You could actually surf the web, check email, log into Facebook, anywhere there was WiFi service. How cool is that?

So, that's what I got her. And it was without question the single most appreciated gift I've ever given her, even though she rarely uses it for its initial intention: music. I know she really appreciates it because every once in a while she raises her head from one of a dozen or so games of Words with Friends (interactive Scrabble) she is playing simultaneously and says, "Hey, thanks for this thing."

She was so enjoying playing Scrabble that I wanted to play too (albeit not quite so obsessively).  But, alas, there was no Words for Friends for the android platform. Drat!

At that time there wasn't even an alternative, but eventually (probably a couple of days after I wanted it), Word Feud was introduced. Word Feud is essentially the same game as Words with Friends which are both somehow legal rip-offs of the actual game of Scrabble and became available in the Google Android Market. Of course people with iPhones (before Verizon got them) couldn't play against people with Droids. Sort of like the digital version of the Hatfields vs. the McCoys feud.

But, finally, and almost coinciding with the liberation in Egypt, Words with Friends has been released for android. Yay!

Now, my wife and I talk more. Okay, we text chat.

Some say you can find it in the Market, but for sure you can download it from this link on your android device:
http://www.droid-life.com/2011/02/14/words-with-friends-released-on-android/

UPDATE February 19, 2011: After having a week to play a few games of Words with Friends on my Droid, I'm somewhat dissapointed. After Words with Friends became an app sensation on the iPhone platform, WordFeud was created for the android users.

Although iPhone users claim they don't have the same issues I'm experiencing, I find that Words with Friends runs much slower than WordFeud and crashes often. If I temporarily leave the game, it will invariably Force Close when I try to come back.

Since downloading the app, there has only been one update, but I hope they fix this...or perhaps better yet they come out with a cross-platform WordFeud game.

It may not be as colorful and pretty as Words with Friends, it simply performs better. And in the olden days, our dining room table, where we played Scrabble, wasn't all that pretty either.

And if you have some extra time, please check out some of my other blogs and sites:
http://www.hookedondroid.com/
http://www.clickoncomedy.com/
http://jokingsmoker.blogspot.com/
http://www.dirtyjokeshow.com/
http://www.interactivelunacy.om/
http://www.cellphonerealitytv.com/

Internet access on your laptop through your Droid with PDANet App - for FREE



For me, one of the coolest things about having a Smartphone is that you can use it connect to your laptop and get online. At pretty damned good speed, I might add. Without rooting. For free.

Prior to switching over to the Android platform, I was a Blackberry user and used the Tetherberry app to get on the internet. I believe I paid $59 to purchase the app, and all-in-all still feel that it was a good investment. Tetherberry now has the same app available for Android phones and the cost is only $29. I haven't used their app on my Droid, but that seems like a pretty reasonable deal.

Once I dumped Blackberry for my Droid, one of the first things I did was research how to get my online with my laptop through my Droid. At that time Tetherberry (with whom I already had an account) did not have Droid access. So, through the Droid Market and forums, I was directed to the PDANet app from June Fabrics. They currently offer tethering apps for Droid, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and PalmOS.

Load it on your phone (with the option to load the PC software onto your SD card to have it ready to load to your laptop when you connect the two), and in very short order you are online. It works amazingly well and it is 100% FREE. Sort of.

After downloading the PDANet app to your phone and laptop, you simply open the software on both and you are online. You may now surf anywhere on the net---as long as it isn't a secure web site. Meaning, you can search on Google, go to Yahoo!, visit web sites, but you can't check your Gmail or log into PayPal or check your bank account balance.

This is brilliant on the part of June Fabrics. They gave me the app for free. Allowed me to see how easy and useful it is. Then reminded me when I habitually tried to check my email, that I would have to purchase the full version to do that.

So that's what I'm gonna do. It's only $23.95 for a full licensed version (now on sale for only $15.99) with unlimited free upgrades for one phone and all the laptops you want to load it on.

Of course, this technology is probably going to go by the wayside soon as more and more phones are able to become their own WiFi hotspots.

Google Android goes from zero to hero and is kicking iPhone butt



When the whole Google and Android thing was first announced, it was met with major skepticism. Many experts thought that it would fail miserably. Even Microsoft's CEO Steve Balmer said in 2008 that he didn't understand Google's strategy.

By August 2010 those same experts were calling Google's Android project a success, even though they hadn't yet made any money.

Fast forward to today and it is projected that the Android project will hit $1 billion in ad revenue by next year.

Even though Apple is still making a ton of money off of their products, Google jumped in with the intent of doing what they do best, only making it mobile. Search and advertising.

Google passed Apple in mobile advertising revenue in January and brought in $5.90 per user in 2010. That number is expected to grow to nearly $10 in 2012.

This could really work out well for the Android platform user since Google invested $600 million in the project to include advertising in many of the apps that are available for free. Stands to reason that more and more great apps will become available at no charge because their "destined to fail" strategy is kicking ass.

Way to go Google. Now let's talk about this little Google TV idea you guys are working on.

How to lose weight with your Droid or iPhone



Probably the best way to use your Droid to lose weight and get more fit would be to leave your Smartphone on a different level of your home or office so that every time you need to use the phone, check or send an email or surf the web you'll have to run up a flight or two to do it.

Another way is to download one of the many fitness apps available, and most importantly, stick to the program.

I'm going to take a look at one app that I've been using for the past two weeks. So far, I've lost five pounds. (Which is good, but in all honesty, is about equal to a big dump.)

The app is called My Fitness Pal and is located in the Android Market and the Apple App Store. It's free and, although I've seen a number of calorie counting weight-loss programs, this one is pretty damned cool. If you don't have a Android phone or an iPhone, you can also sign up online (http://www.myfitnesspal.com/) and set up an account there. (I think that's the way Fred and Barney used to have to do it.) In any event, signing up and using this program is completely free wherever you do it.

Basically, what the app does is gives you an easy way to keep track of the number of calories you're consuming and burning on a daily basis and helps you set up a program to safely lose, maintain or gain weight. You simply start by entering some very basic info (your current weight, your age, how much you'd like to weigh and when you'd like to reach that goal). Then, the app will tell you how many calories you need to consume each day to reach your goal in your chosen time period.

I am allowed 1,590 calories per day. At first it seemed like a lot, but if I had continued on my normal (and relatively healthy) eating schedule, I'd probably be somewhere in the 2,400-2,800 calorie area (which is said to be normal for my weight and height).

So, once you download the program, you click on the MyFitnessPal icon and it takes you to the home page which gives you an overview of your daily plan. You can see how many calories you have remaining for that day, how many calories you've consumed and how many extra calories you gained by doing cardiovascular exercise.

To add a particular food, you click on Add to Diary and select your meal (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack). Then you can either select the food from your list of recent and frequently consumed stuff, search in their massive search engine by name,  or use the scanner option in MyFitnessPal to scan the food in.

If you cannot find the food you wish to add, there is also an Add Calories option so that you can just add them manually. The same is true for exercise. I leaned this because they don't have a listing for vacuuming and dammit, you burn over 200 calories an hour vacuuming and I want the credit.

Once you get going on the program, your most common way to enter food is from your list of foods you've already entered. I do use the scanner and search engine (with voice recognition) often though. The scanner is very useful for snacks and meals. If, for instance, you're having frozen brocolli from Kroger, you simply scan the bag's bar code and it will enter one serving on your screen. You can adjust that meet how much you actually ate. For example: if you only ate half an apple you can put .5 in the serving size area. But what the hell are you doing eating only half an apple.

I find this program really easy to use and it is very helpful in keeping me mindful of portions. I passed on a small bag of pretzels because I figured if I was gonna blow 230 calories a couple of scoops of ice cream sounded a lot better.

Here is a very simple and blurry tutorial on how to use My Fitness Pal.