Month: April 2012

The other day I wrote about my new phone, the Motorola RAZR XT910.  Now I am going to give my opinion of 5 different apps on my phone.  This will be the first of probably 2 or 3 reviews I will be doing.

Comodo Mobile Security – For those that don’t know, Comodo currently makes the best antivirus product in the world and now that protection has been ported over to the Android operating system.  This app has many great features, the best feature is the Anti Theft.  Once the Anti Theft is setup, you can then do various things to your Android phone if it is ever misplace, lost or stolen.  You simply send a text message to your phone with one of about 5 different keywords.  For example, if you wish to know where your phone is, you would simply text the word locate along with the password you setup and Comodo will text back of it’s GPS location.  If phone stolen, then text the word wipe to have all your personal stuff erased.  Comodo will even text a mobile number of your choice when it detects that the SIM card has been tampered with.

Endomondo – Looking for an app to keep track of your work outs, including running, walking or cycling, then you can not go wrong with Endomondo.  I have been using this app for awhile on my old BlackBerry and I always enjoyed seeing my cycling route after I have finished my workout and submitted my stats.  It provides details like distance, burned calories and average speed.  Very good app and worth buying the Pro version which has a battery saver feature.

Game Free – If you have a lot of video games, either for console or computer and you want to keep track of them all in a database then give this app a try.  It has a great built-in barcode scanner so all you have to do is scan in the barcode off your game box and as long as the barcode is in their database, all the details including box art will automatically be imported for you to save down.

GO Mobile – If you live in or around an area with GO Transit and you are someone who may require using that transit system then I strongly take a look at this app.  It was created in collaboration with Ryerson College and it really is a very nice, easy to use app for finding GO Transit information, both for train and bus routes.

ICSSync – This app is a paid app but does allow you to try it out for so many days.  What it does is it will connect to any server hosted calendar and can even allow you to make changes.  I am currently using it to import 4 different calendars, 2 of which are editable but unfortunately this app doesn’t seem to upload changes in a stable manner.  When I tried it earlier, it rendered my calendar file on my server inaccessible.  Luckily I have several computers using the same calendar and keeping a copy on the local machine for re-syncing in these types of situations.  I wrote a letter to the creator of this app informing him/her of the problem.  I hope to hear back soon.  If I do, I will post an update on the outcome.

Well, that is my first 5 app reviews that I enjoy having on my Android phone.  The next 5 will come in a couple of days so come back then to check it out.

I recently got back from my local Cineplex after watching Wrestlemania XXVIII (that’s 28 for those who do not know their roman numerals) and it was a blast.  The crowd in the theatre were quite vocal in their cheers of their favourite wrestlers, it really made the experience much more enjoyable.

The first match of the night was the World Heavyweight Championship match, an unusual way to start a pay per view but needless to say it was a shocking match.  How was it shocking, well it broke a record for the quickest match ever at a Wrestlemania event.  Sheamus had Daniel Bryan knocked out and pinned in…get this…18 seconds…yes you read that right, 18 seconds is all it took for Bryan to lose his title.

Big Show vs Cody Rhodes was a fairly good match.  It looked as if Cody was going to win and retain his belt by the way Cody was taking it to Big Show but Big Show came back hard and took out Cody with a right hand punch to the Cody face, knocking him out cold resulting in Big Show becoming an Intercontinental Champion.

Team Teddy vs Team Johnny.  I was rooting for Team Teddy to win and it looked like that was going to happen BUT that damn Eve, who came to ringside with Zack Ryder, got involved causing Team Teddy to lose the match.

Undertaker vs Triple H.  This match was a fairly vicious match with Triple H giving Undertaker multiple chair shots to the back over and over and over to the point where the special ref, HBK, was stepping in trying to convince Triple H to stop the chair shots.  Undertaker is not a young guy and you can see that by how much he is huffing and puffing after just a few minutes in to a match but I do have to give him credit for the amount of punishment he is able to absorb and still get back up, albeit slowly.  In the end it was Undertaker who won the match for the second time over Triple H.  I was really rooting for Triple H to win in hopes that would mean the end of Undertaker for good.  I don’t like wrestlers hanging around when they are struggling to keep up with the younger guys.

Rock vs Cena.  When trying to decide who the winner would be for this match, I could not confidently pick one because both of these wrestlers are great wrestlers, whether you like them or not plus given the huge popularity of both just makes it even harder to think who the WWE is going to make as the winner.  My initial thought was that the match would end in some kind of double disqualification, either by count out or them both going to far with beating each other up.  There was a victor however and that would end up being The Rock.  It will be interesting to see now if the Cena/Rock feud continues or whether the Rock disappears for another 7+ years.

Well, it’s late so I am ending my review here.  There were one or two other matches but they were not that memorable so I am not going to waste my time mentioning them.  If you want to know the results, go to http://wwe.com yourself.  While you are there, you can also check out the contest the WWE is running until May.  It is 1 of 100 prize packs to go see Wrestlemania XXIX (29) in New York, NJ.

Well, after roughly 6 1/2 months of using the BlackBerry Curve 9300 and getting fed-up with the constant low memory issues, I went over to my local Fido kiosk Friday night and purchased the Motorola RAZR XT910 using some of my accumulated Fido Dollars.

I am not going to run down comparisons between the BlackBerry and the XT910 like I did a bit when I replaced my broken iPhone 3G with the BlackBerry device.  The reason for this is simple, BlackBerry would get crushed by all the amazing features the XT910 has.

The XT910 from Fido comes with the Android operating system plus 42 pre-loaded applications.  Some applications appear to be duplicates, just made by a different company.  For instance there are 3 map apps, why anyone would want three is beyond me but I guess Motorola probably already had 1 or 2 installed when Fido added their own stuff.

Since Friday, I have probably added another 30+ apps.  I will review some of them in another post because this post is all about the phone.

The XT910 is a very thin phone, even thinner than the iPhone with exception in the area of the HD camera.  That area is about the same thickness at an iPhone.

Speed…OMG…This thing is pretty fast, even when app downloads and updates are going on in the background.  The dual core 1.2GHz processor really makes this phone fly.  Friday night, I was like a little kid, I received very little sleep because all my mind wanted to do was use the phone and check out all the greatness this phone has to offer.

The display on this baby is beautiful and it is nice to be back on a phone with a large screen.

One nice app that came pre-installed is the MotoPrint.  It allows you to print from the phone to a network printer.  Now not all printers are supported.  There are a total of 3 printers at my location but I can only setup 1 of them until I get the MotoPrint software installed on the computer hosting the other 2 printers.  I was also able to add my “Print to Adobe PDF” printer so if I create or edit an existing document using the pre-installed office app, I can save it to my main system in PDF format.

Another great feature is the MotoCast.  This allows you to access files on any Windows or Mac (sorry Linux, I guess Motorola hates you which is sad since Linux IS the better operation system) computer that has the MotoCast software installed.  What this means is no more constantly having to connect your phone to the computer just to sync up a song or photo.  It can now be done all through a wireless network.  Might even work through your carrier connection but I won’t be trying that, not with current cost of data plans.

Weather – It is always nice to be able to check the weather on a mobile device and the pre-loaded weather app on the XT910 is gorgeous compared to the Weather Eye app from The Weather Network.  When you tap the forecast on the home screen, the weather app opens up and you have this beautiful animated graphic indicating the weather outside underneath your weather details.  It allows both an auto follow setting or if you wish, you can also setup several saved locations.  Myself, I have added Niagara Falls to my saved location list so I can keep track of the weather closer to when friends and I will be heading there for 2nd annual bike ride.

Calendar – This pre-loaded app was a bit of a disappointment to me.  It comes off very blah and boring.  I would like to have seen a little more colour or flare in this.  The app itself has no option to add a network calendar so you need to use an app like ICSSync (review coming in a future post) to access and edit your network calendar.

Well I think that is it.  The only thing I do kind of miss from the BlackBerry is the physical keyboard.  Much easier to screw up your typing using a touch screen keyboard when your fingers are larger than a child.