Best Todo List Program for Android

GTasks is the best and free Todo list application that I have been using since I baught my Android phone, Samsung Galaxy S3. I use this to organize my daily activities and sometimes I used this applicaiton to take notes too. It is pretty flexible and user friendly!

There are few good things about this application and I think this is good to share with you. Some are it I didn't aware of them until after I use it for certain period.


Few Good Things

• Able to synch with Google tasks. So you won't lose all your todo information because you can always synch back later.

• Has categories but you need to create them. When you create your task, it defaults to "All" categories. You can go to Menu->Move to List, then choose the List/Category that you want this task to be categorized too. If the List/Category doesn't exist, you can click on the "New List.." to create them.

• Has other normal todo list features such as due date, reminder, set recurring task, and setting prioriy. For priority, it only allows you to set urgent or not urgent. 2 levels of prioritization only. :) It allows you to do sorting too either by date, name or priority.

• Very user friendly. You can put it in widget to show All or specific category/list tasks at your home screen without even open the application. When you are in the application, you can swipe right or left to switch to different task category which I find this is extremely handy.

There is only one bad thing I would like to comment for this Gtask applicaition is when you try to delete multiple tasks at the same time, it doesn't work. The software itself allows you to do that but it seems like has bugs. It lags very badly and after that you check on those tasks, there are still there.

So to workaround with it,  you need to delete one by one which I find it is not every effective and time consuming. Thus, I try to delete the task rather than keep the list growing! Something to improve...


You can download this application here or just search for Gtask in your GooglePlay store.

Best Watching Movie Online Application for Android and IOS - PPS.TV

One of the best things you can do with your mobile tablet is to watch movie online on your bed or where ever the place that you will comfortable with. So I have been searching around and trying out different applications for my Android phone and iPad and it turns out the best movie streaming applications is PPS.tv. No other application is as good as or as stable as PPS.tv. For example, "PPTV" which I downloaded lately, it drained up my battery overnight eventhough I"m not using it. So I will definately not recommended for it.

Just do a search with "PPS" or "PPS.TV" in your GooglePlay Store and iTunes, you should able to find it. To know more about this company, you can visit the official page here. According to them, it is the world largest online video service provider but wikipedia says it is still behind Youku and Tudou in China Market. :D

There are mobile and HD version and I think either one is fine. But for my Android phone, somehow the mobile version is only working for me but not the HD version. For HD version, it works fine with my iPad.

Pros

• Watch Movies or TV shows for free.
• Contains most updated TV programs especially for Chinese TV shows.
• Has ability to resume movie after you close or exit the application.

Cons

• Is only written in Chinese. You need to undrestand Chinese in order to use this application.
• Need high-speed internet connection for smooth video streaming.
• Most movies are outdated. If you're looking for the latest movie, it may not have it.
• Some western movies are translated to Mandarin which I find it is not original

Is It Legal?

Most people will ask this quesiton whether PPS.TV is legal or not? I honestly do not know the answer. If I"m not mistaken, the streaming technology is using P2P protocol which means technically we cannot tell whether it is "illegal" or not. If it is not "illegal", is it legal? I wouldn't sure and the discussion goes beyond of this scope. So I suggest you use this applicaiton for your educational purpose only.

Using Symbolic Link in Windows with Mklink Command

Symbolic link is something very common in Unix or Linux environment which allow to link the files and directory and ultimately able to make fool of the application. However, not many of us aware there is a new command in windows (i.e. Mklink) which was introduced in MS Vista.

For example, I want to create a soft link to folder_a, I enter the command below:

D:\tmp\mklink_test>mklink /D folder_linked_a folder_a
symbolic link created for folder_linked_a <<===>> folder_a

This creates a symbolic link folder_linked_a to folder_a. To create a hard link, you will need to use the following command with /F:

D:\tmp\mklink_test>mklink /D /F folder_linked_b folder_asymbolic link created for folder_linked_a <<===>> folder_a

For file (not directory) symbolic linking, remove the /D and for file (not directory) hard link, enter the command with /H. To show all the command help just type "Mklink /?"


What is Soft/Symbolic and Hard Link?

Soft or symbolic link is just a shortcut to a file or folder.Operating system treats this a shortcut, not the actual location. Sometimes when we want to quick workaround without changing the directory, using symbolic link is one of the ways to make fool of the application.

Hard link is directly points to the file. The operating system treats this hard link as the actual location. You may want to do this to fake an application directory if symbolic link doesn't work.


How to delete the link?

Just as usual, either you can delete it from windows explorer GUI or command line using "rmdir" or "del"command.

Mobile Android Version of Speedtest.Net

Used to go the www.speedtest.net directly to check for the upload and download speed and now is a lot more convenient to check it out from your phone. I just love this application - Speedtest.net from Google Play!

Hope you like it too. :)

Android Apps from The Edge is Very Suck!

Specifically the apps are "The Edge Financially Daily" and "The Edge Singapore". It supposes to be a very informative newspaper on financial stuff it ends up totally screw up. Perhaps they hire the fresh grad to implement such application and never properly verify the apps?

The user review for "The Edge Financially Daily", the user review for "The Edge Singapore" is even worst!

It is extremely slow and can't download. Not user friendly... I think maybe this is due to the implementation is not in XML. Anyway, I"m speechless.

P/S: I think the IOS apps version is not very good too, maybe slightly better. The edge, time to improve and act fast!

Solution to Sync Outlook Notes to Android

Unfortunately there is no way you can do that (at the free way), unless you know how, then you can share with me. I was looking for a solution for this when I"m changing my phone from Windows Mobile to Android. The only way that I found is to copy over those notes to simple text and then you can view it in your Android phone.

Step 1: Convert Outlook Notes to Text

You will need to perform a basic virtual basic script to automatically convert the notes to text which I found it from www.syncdroid.net. Follow the steps there and it should work. A list of notes in text will be created in your C:\notes folder.


Step 2: Upload to Google Docs

You can then upload those texts to Google Docs and install the Android apps which allows you to sync with Google Docs. Try to search in Google Play Store, you can find plenty of them. I"m using the official "Drive" Apps from Google.

Hope that helps.

Best Free Virtual Desktop for Windows - Dexpot

It has been quite sometime I don't use virtual desktop software (of course in Windows) because most of them are not reliable especially the free version as mentioned in my very long time ago post. :)

This Dexpot Virtual Desktops software is so far I like most. The most useful feature in this Dexpot is the "Desktop Manager". When you enable it you will see something like below and you can quickly switch to different virtual monitors.

It has 4 virtual monitors in total. If you don't want the "Desktop Manager" at the lower right, you can move around it too. Switching speed a little bit lagging as you can see the screen flashing especially you switch to "monitor 1" but I think that is still acceptable.

You can download Dexpot here.

Best Free Flow Chart Software - yEd Graphic Editor

Engineers (maybe programmer too) like to use flow chart to illustrate the processing flow and I'm one of them. However, it is very hard to find a free user friendly software to draw the flow chart. So most of the time, I'm using Microsoft Word to draw the flow chart which is totally not effective at all until I found this free "yEd Graphic edtitor" by yWorks which was recommended by one of my colleagues. Once you you have tried this software, I"m sure you will throw away others because it is really very user friendly and very convenient to use.

A very simple flow chart that I draw using this software within a few minutes (I think around 2 minutes)...

What I like about this yEd Graphic editor?

• Yeah, of course it is FREE. The main reason!

• Draw any shape easily. You can drag and drop the box that you would like to draw. Re-size the shape as you wish. To redraw a similar box, you can just do copy and paste.

• Draw arrow easily by clicking and holding the box and moving it to another box. Just try it yourself,  you will know what I meant.

• Enter text in the box by just double clicking the box.

• Auto show the line to tell you whether your boxes are aligned with the rest. It shows you both edges and middle lines of the of box when you move around your boxes. 

• Change the color in the box by "property view". Just click on the box, you will see the property view, then you can change a lot of stuff there, not only the color!

• Enter label besides the arrow by just clicking the label, you will then key in the label text that as you wish. After that, you can also move the label to few predefined positions of the arrow (e.g. upper left/right or lower left/right). Very user friendly!

Those are the simple one and I believe you can do more fancy stuff with this software. But for these tips above, I think it is good enough for majority of the people. Enjoy!

You can download this yEd Graphic editors by yWorks here: Download yEd Graphic Editors

Auto Vibrate or Silent Your Android During Meeting - Busy Me

I'm lazy person and I don't like to turn my Android phone to silent or vibrate mode "MANUALLY" during meeting. I'm looking for something that can be done "AUTOMATICALLY". Probably I get used to my old HTC diamond phone (runs on Windows Mobile) which this feature comes by default.

Anyway, I found this cool software called "Busy Me" and it gives me exactly what I wanted. I have been using this software using for quite sometime and encounter some minor bugs (sometimes it just doesn't work and I need to turn my phone to silent mode manually) but I think that is still acceptable. Most importantly, it is FREE!

 

I turn off the  "Notifications" because I think it is a useless thing. But if you want to get a sense of whether the "Busy Me" works as expected, you may want to turn it ON to see how it goes. The "Activation" and "Deactivation" can be set "On Time", 5 minutes, 10 minutes or 15 minutes early.  I set it 15 minutes for both which means that my phone will be in "silent" mode 15 minutes prior to the meeting (activation) and 15 minutes after the meeting finish, my phone will be back to normal mode again (deactivation).

Play around with it, there are other pretty cool options(e.g. change to silent mode instead of vibrate, choose which calenders to use, and etc.) 

To download this software, just do a search "Busy Me" in Google Play and you can also download it from Google Play here.

Best Power Saving Application For Android - JuiceDefender

So far have been using  "JuiceDefender" application for few weeks, I found it very useful especially you turn on your internet connection (especially for data plan/mobile data) 24 hours in your Android phone.

That means if you do not turn on your internet connections (either WIFI or data plan/mobile data) for 24 hours and you not lazy to turn it off when you're not using or out of the WIFI range, then I don't think this "JuiceDefender" application is that efficient.

There are few version of JuiceDefender (i.e. battery saver, ultimate, and plus). Battery saver is free version and the rest is paid version. The free version doesn't support the WIFI but still able to support the data plan/mobile data which I think that is good enough because "Mobile Data" is the biggest power consumption in phone. 

Juice Defender Settings

1. Choose "balanced" profile is good enough. The rest you can ignore. 
2. For notification, I advice you to enable it so that you can see the "Icons legend" and get a sense of whether your connection is ON. This is important because sometime JuiceDefender unable to connect back after you unlock your phone adn this "Icons legent" is the only indicator that you have.
3. The full log tells you more about the activity.
4. Go to help section it shows you how much power you can save with this applications. It is usually 2X!

In short,  if you enable internet connection all the time, I strongly suggest you to use this power saving application. However, sometimes you face some bugs then you will have to enable enable back the connection manually.

You can just search "JuiceDefender" in your Google Play or you can also it  here.

Tips to Protect Your Google Password From Stealing

My Google account has been hacked before, thus I"m very concern about the security of my Google password. I appreciate the hacker just gave a warning to me and not doing anything that extremely damaging! Thank You!

I will find all my best to protect the password and here are the tips that I"m going to share with you how you can strengthen your Google password security.

(1) Change Your Password Every Quarter

Well, you may think this is not necessary but I think it is safer if you can change your password every quarter (i.e. 3 months). I will have my own pattern of creating new password, so I can easily remember.  Of course, please make sure your password is the strong password too. Google will able to tell you that whether your password is strong enough.


(2) Disable Account Recovery Options

I believe this is how my Google account is hacked. For better security, only use your "mobile phone" as the only option to recover your password. This means you do not need to key in the recovery email address. If there is, please remove it. When you receive the SMS recovery password code, you will know someone is trying to hack your account. I honestly received it before few times!

Another very important thing is the security question - do not use simple security question such as "What is my favorite color?". I think this is a very high potential the reason why my account was hacked because my security question is too simple to guess like the one above. Please use complex security question and make sure it is not easy to guess. I do not know the reasons why Google "enforces" this security question but this definitely open up to hackers to do their job easier. If you can disable this (assuming Google doesn't enforce this), then it is even better. Using mobile phone to recover password is the safest option in my opinion.

Note: Not sure if this is Google bug, I remembered I tried to recover my own password only with this security question. Perhaps I didn't set other recovery options. I encourage you to try to recover your own password and see if it sends recovery code to your mobile phone or not.


(3) Turn on 2-step Verification

It is a new feature that I only realized lately. What you need to do is go here and follow the instructions:

Gmail -> Settings -> Other Google Account Settings -> Security -> 2 Step Verification

You can select your default machine to login, then Google won't ask you for 2-step verification. If you login from another computer, then Google will ask you that. It will send the verification code to your mobile phone through SMS. You can also download a list of verification codes just in case you do not have the SMS access. I suggest you do this by printing it out and keep it in the safe place rather than download the verification codes in your computer.


(4) Do not Link to Your Google in Your Android Phone

I know this is ridiculous as all android phones are linked to your Google account. It really depends on how important is your Google account. If your Google account contains very important and confidential stuff (e.g. access to your paypal account, adsense and others accounts that related to money), I would suggest you  not to link it with your Android phone if possible. Security in mobile phone is never safe!

So, what I do is I create another new Google account is mainly to link to my Android phone. I feel this way is a lot more safer. Hackers will not have a way to link to your real Google account if they manage to hack into your phone. Also, what about you lost your phone? They only can hack to the Google account that is meant to be hacked!

Note: If you really cannot live without your Google account, then I guess you need to be careful of not simply install third party mobile applications that are not approved by Google (Play) or Apple (itunes).


(5) Install Anti-Virus Software

AVG is always my favorite and there is mobile version too. You can just do a "AVG" search in the Google Play market and you should able to find it. Most importantly, it is free! :)


Do you have any tips to share how you protect your Google account password?

Edit HTML Problem in New Blogger Interface

I just want to share a piece of information that I discovered about the root cause of the Edit HTML problem that I 'm facing in the new blogger interface. If you do not face this problem, you may skip this article.

Don't know since when, blogger has forced us to use the "New Blogger Interface". At first, it seems pretty cool after you get used to some of the new GUI features but one thing that border me is the "Edit HTML" function under the template. Whenever I go to the template and I have this infinite loading page problem!

 I only see this "blogger progress icon" in my entire page! It loads forever...

To workaround with this problem, I just simply switch back to the "Old Blogger Interface" as follow:

It appears solves the problem but wait! What if one day Google doesn't allow me to switch back to the "Old Blogger Interface". Then, I will forever stuck and will not able to access to my blog HTML directly anymore.

So, I must figure it out and it turns out that it was due to my following javascript in most of my blogs that caused the infinite loading problem in the new blogger interface:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
if (top.location != self.location) top.location.replace(self.location);
</script>

I think I added this code to prevent the "NetworkedBlog" to frame my blogs. So, what I did I just remove this code from my blog and everything gets solved! I get a nice template page below. It used to cannot load at all.

Apparently the "NetworkedBlogs" has a new feature to disable this frame. What you need to do is go to Syndication, choose Your Blog and select "Custom Post". Then, you just select the "Hide NetworkedBlogs Toolbar" to disable the frame. When the frame is disabled, you do not need the javascripot above anymore.

 P/S: Hope you have similar problems like mine and this post helps.

No Longer Need to Click Twice To Access Gmail Labels

Honestly, I’m not sure how Google decides what labels to show and hide. Probably it is based on how frequent you access those labels. But what makes me trouble is I always need to click twice to go to the label that I want to go too because those labels are hidden. Guess Google is not that smart and decides wrongly?

You can actually customize your labels whether you want to show them or hide them. Go to “Settings –> Label”. If you can’t find it just use this link then:

https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#settings/labels

You will see System labels as shown above and scroll down you will see your labels. Just hide whatever you never use and show for those label that you use frequently so that you Gmail is not over crowded.

P/s: I still prefer the concept of folder. It is much easier to move around and organize as compared to label.

Best Free Chinese Chess Game Program - HOXChess

HOXChess is an open source Chinese Chess (i.e. Xiangqi) program and so far it is the best free Chinese chess program that I have played. There are few Chinese Chess program that I have played before, their algorithm are not as good as HOXChess. lol, basically the rest I can win easily except for HOXChess.:D

You can either play with computer for practice or you can also play with online real players through the server. For playing with computer, you can select different A.I. algorithm. Some A.I. algorithms are pretty stupid too, not all of them are smart. Go to "Tools -> Options -> AI" and you will see the following screen:

You can set different difficulty level range from 1 - 10 while you're playing with computers. You may need to wait a little longer if you set the difficulty level to 10.

The most awesome feature about this program is you can also play with online random players! There are 2 online server websites:

• www.playxiangqi.com
• www.chesscape.com

You can go to "File -> Connect Server" and you will see these 2 websites. What you need to do is go to the website to register a user name. After that, you can login with your user name and password. When you first login, you will see a list of tables. You can either join the existing table or create a new one. The screen that you're seeing is very similar to the one that you play with your computer - just without the "LOCAL_" prefix in your opponent's name.You can also be a watcher and not playing. Anyway, the GUI is self-explanatory and very user friendly. Enjoy!

There are Windows, Mac OS and Linux version. Here is the download page of HOXChess. It also available at iTunes. You can just do a "HOXChess" search in iTunes or AppStore, you should able to find it and it is completely free.

Fastest Way to Check Currency Conversion with Google

Do you know that we can use "Google" search engine not merely for searching purpose? You can use Google for dictionary and also use Google for world time clock. Cool isn't it? There are a lot more other cool stuff in fact and what I want to share with you today is "Currency conversion with Google".

For example, if I want to check 1 USD equals to how much of MYR (i.e. Malaysia Ringgit). I just need to search for "USD in MYR".

If you want to check how 1MYR equals how much of USD, you can just do the reverse "MYR in USD".

 

I find this the fattest way you check for currency conversion especially if you know the currency symbol. Hope you will find this useful! :)