Thuuz is a must app for any sports fan - Android app review



Not long ago, I blogged about an app that claimed that you could Make Money to Download Apps. Frankly, most of the apps that I downloaded to make a few bucks weren't kept any longer than I needed to to collect the 17 cents or whatever. But, as was probably the whole point behind this marketing method of paying people to download apps, I did run across a couple that were keepers.

One of them was Thuuz, a sports app which sends you updates on your selected sports and notifies you when there are really good games going on. They also rate the games on a 0-100 scale and tell you where you can watch the game live if you're so inclined.

I'm not a sports fanatic by any means, but if I'm going to watch a game that doesn't involve one of my home teams, it damn well better be a really good game.

So, after downloading Thuuz as part of the get paid to download apps program, I took a few minutes to enter my faves and must admit that I enjoy the ocassional notifications of great games in progress.

The app is available in the Android Market and has about a 4.5 star rating, or check out their web site at http://www.thuuz.com/.



Google Currents App Review - news reader better than Pulse?

I discovered the Google Currents news reader application for Android while browsing the Technology area of another news reader app, Pulse.

Because I was using Pulse, it's obvious that I like it. It's a really easy to navigate interface that categorizes your personal news and information preferences. Sometimes I'm in the mood for technology, other times I'm in the mood for stupid entertainment gossip. Pulse provides this very nicely. Read more about Pulse here.

So, I was thrilled to see that I may now have a cool alternative. And one created by Google to boot.

The good news is: it's not bad. The bad news is: it's not great.

For me, the attraction of Pulse is that there are a lot of options on the screen, and you can scroll through a number of articles, from a variety of publications conveniently from each screen.

On Google Currents, you choose from the Library listing, which has a scrolling list of the individual publications that you added to your personalized preferences; or you click on Trending which provides all of the hot stories of the moment.

So, let's say you click on a story about Gabby Gifford leading the pledge of allegiance, it still takes another couple of screens to get to the story you want. Then, once at the story you selected, you can continue to swipe sideways (a feature I like much better scrolling up) to continue reading, and if you swipe again it will take you to another article about the same subject. I like this feature when I'm in the mood to read a lot about a particular story, or if you want to get more than one perspective on a particular topic.

Google Currents ends each article with a few Suggested Articles, another feature that fits nicely in my life when I'm in the mood to explore the article's subject more.

Both applications load the articles in their own "reader" format which is definitely more aesthetically pleasing than an RSS feed. And both apps also offer you the ability to jump over to the original article in your preferred Android browser. One thing that seemed a bit odd to me was that if you load the Original Article (into the Currents interface, not on the web), you now need to scroll down, as opposed to the page-turning scrolling on the original article.

My recommendation: download both apps and decide for yourself. If you're a news and info junkie you'll probably be like me and use each one depending on your mood and appetite.

Groupon stock sinks below initial offering - What? No more cheap facials?

Even though I delete 99% of all of the offers I receive form Groupon, Living Social and Moolala, as a consumer I find that the ocassional opportunity to save a bunch of money very appealing and, in this economy, necessary. But, it comes as no surprise that Groupon's (GRPN) advertisers are dropping like flies and their stock has dipped below it's initial offering.

[NOTE: Both Groupon and Living Social have Android apps available in the Android Market. Click on the links above to set up your free account, then download the apps.]

Over the past year I have had a few conversations with advertisers (mostly restaurants) who are using these daily deals programs to get the word out about their food, products or services and every one of them bitched that it was costing them too much money to get customers to come in once for the amazing discount and probably never come back again.

With restaurants, the whole purpose, from an advertising standpoint, is to get customers to try their fare, and if they love it they'll come back. Reality check: they're not coming back because they're down the street at the competitor's place eating their cheap Groupon food deal.

Groupon's stock has now dipped below its initial IPO opening price. And studies show that advertisers aren't re-upping with Groupon because they feel that they are paying a premium to get the customer to come in, but they never come back. It just isn't a good advertising/marketing move.

It seems that if these daily deal programs want to survive, they're going to have to make it more appealing to advertisiers (ie: cheaper), while still offering great products and services to the consumer.

In the meantime, grab those deals while you can.

IRIS - the Android app alternative to SIRI doesn't seem to fill the void

A few days ago, the Android Market offered an app called the "Official" SIRI for Android. It wasn't. And because Google stays on top of monitoring their open market, they were able to remove it from the Market in very short order. Kudos to Google. I'd still much rather have an open market which sometimes needs to be tweaked than not.

But, this review is not of the app which was removed from the Market, but of an app that was created by a group of developers in only eight hours a few months back, cleverly(?) called IRIS (SIRI backwards).

First, let me say that the fact that the developers created this interactive voice personal assistant app to compete with the iPhone's SIRI in a mere eight hours (or so the instant-legend claims), is an incredible accomplishment. Ultimately though, for me it was only a fun novelty for a short while before I decided that as far as personal assistant apps go for the Android, I much prefer using Vlingo.

It sounded intriguing to have an app for Android that would verbally respond to your requests, so i downloaded and loaded the free IRIS app (there are a number of other SIRI clones as well). After I was done asking the usual array of stupid questions like, "Are you a man or woman?"; "Are you married?"; "Are you better than Siri?"; I moved on to informational things such as, "What will the weather be like tomorrow?"; "How far is it to the Moon?"; "Where is Madagascar?" She (I confirmed that) did okay. Just okay.

For instance, I asked IRIS, "How many U.S. dollars are there in a British pound?" The reply, although accurate, was far more confusing than the question. IRIS returned the calculation for a number that she just pulled  out of her cyber-butt  and returned with a reply which told me how many GBP you would have if you had 7,200,000 U.S. dollars. (This ocurred after the Cha Cha integration-see Comments.) Often, I found that you had to continually rephrase questions until you finally got the answer you were looking for.

Then, I moved on to trying more productive things like asking IRIS to open apps and text people for me. She couldn't do either.

One of the features of Vlingo that I love and use often is for texting. You can open Vlingo and speak: "Text Joe I'm on my way period do you want me to bring anything question mark" and it gets it right 95% of the time. Another useful feature of Vlingo which comes in quite handy is when you want to open an app that you don't use all that often, and you don't want to scroll through all of your apps to find it, you simply say, "Open stopwatch" and Voila! it opens right up.

As a novelty, IRIS is rather fun, but not nearly as useful a tool as I had hoped. I won't uninstall though, because when those smug, iPhone users are showing off SIRI, I can at least open IRIS and ask a loaded question that I know the bitch has the right answer to. :)