Tag: android

My SUPERSONIC Android Smartphone – The Samsung Galaxy S II

Ali Naqvi Leave a comment

Don’t you think its amazing that you can now have a multifunction computer with a dedicated graphics processing unit, a high definition screen, high fidelity sound, speech recognition, touch sensitivity, satellite navigation, compass, full Internet connectivity, fm radio, voip phone, point and shoot camera and camcorder with 1080p, ftp server, print server, ebook reader, audio / video streamer, remote control and all the apps you will ever need in the palm of your hand? Crazy no? We are living in exciting times.

I have been a faithful android fanatic ever since it launched. I used to have windows smartphones before this, but I am sure you can understand why I would want to move away from that OS.

I just bought the Samsung Galaxy S 2, after flogging my Nexus S on fleabay.. what a device I tell you.. simply A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. Its got a 1.2 Ghz dual core processor and all of the android communities prowess behind it. Its going strong and is currently the most advanced Android smartphone out there. Check out the monster specs sheet n GSMArena.com and a hands on review on Engadget

Samsung Galaxy S2
The kickass Samsung Galaxy S2

I wanted to try out homebrewed android ROMs after rooting my device over the weekend, as its the all the rave right now. I tried out a few including one called VillianRom. Although there are a few other ROMs out there, this seems to be the most mature. So anyways, I wanted to get the latest android release on my phone, which currently is Gingerbread 2.3.4 so after installing VillianRom I can report that the phone has become truly supersonic. The quadrant benchmarking scores are off the ROOF, and Linpack reports 86 megaflops on multithread.

There is a lot I can say about this phone, actually I can’t stop talking about it, so I’ll stop here. I will however list some of the apps I most frequently use.

Coolest Apps On The Android Market as of July 2011

  1. My Backup Pro
  2. Audiogalaxy
  3. Astro file manager
  4. Shazam encore
  5. Rom Manager
  6. Set CPU
  7. Root explorer
  8. HulloMail
  9. Whatsapp
  10. Remote VNC Pro
  11. Barcode scanner
  12. Zabihah
  13. Adfree
  14. Swiftkey X
  15. Shootme
  16. Skype
  17. Pulse
  18. Cube Extended
  19. Llama
  20. Google+
  21. Go Weather HD
  22. Tubemate (unavailable on the market right now)
  23. BBC news
  24. Total recall

Some screenshots for to make this post a little colourful.

 

Home Screen Galaxy S2 Stock ROM
Home Screen Galaxy S2 Stock ROM

 

Quadrant score for galaxy S2 on Stock Rom
Quadrant score for galaxy S2 on Stock Rom

 

Linpack Score for Galaxy S2 Stock ROM
Linpack Score for Galaxy S2 Stock ROM

I will do some more posts about Android in general and how to squeeze every bit of juice out of your android device including tips and tricks as well as some serious reviews on some Android devices I have tested and used including:

  • Motorola Atrix
  • Acer Iconia A500 tab
  • Samsung Nexus S
  • ZTE Blade
  • HTC Desire S
  • HTC Desire
Stay tooned!
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Create your own FREE QR codes and use them to advertise your website.

Ali Naqvi Leave a comment

QR Codes and some fun marketing ideas

Fire up your smart phone, download a barcode scanner app and scan this.

123vouchercodes.co.uk QR code
SCAN THIS NOW!

Just created this with an online QR code creator tool. I think its cool (oh baby I’m no fool)… I wonder where I can put my logos on here like this article suggests. There are a lot of other online tools that I came across, this one just gave me a large size image which is why I used it. Google em.

You could in theory put pretty much anything on a QR code. The one above is a shameless plug to my shopping discounts and voucher codes website. You could use plain text, web addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and SMS numbers to create one. Give it a go at Kaywa.

I just thought of a few things I could try out with these. Here are some ideas.

  1. Put one on your blog. (check mine out at the top right of this page)
  2. Make some print outs of the QR code on A4 size and stick them around the office.
  3. Put one in your email signatures.
  4. Slap one in the footer of every email newsletter.
  5. Put it on facebook as a profile pic (in fact, add a small QR code in the corners of all your pictures on FaceBook)
  6. Upload it on twitpic, flickr and/or other photo hosting sites. Just put a caption saying “Scan this with your smartphone”, should do the trick.
  7. Get custom post its made with the QR code printed in a corner (3m do custom post it notes).
  8. Get custom postage stamps created with a QR Code. (Royal Mail do custom postage stamps)

Of course these are all fun ideas that I just made up while writing this article.  These ideas should give you a sort of a word of mouth / viral effect web traffic though. Don’t be disappointed if it all goes Pete Tong. These ideas are to be tried out only for a bit of fun. I will of course use these ideas to test the waters. Will update the article with some results soon.

Track your QR Code traffic

As the codes can take any format of URL, why not add a very short Google analytics parameter to the end of your URL when building the code.  Search Google for custom variables for Google analytics. Custom variables should give you some stats on the usage of these QR codes. I just added “?u=qrcode” to the end of my URL to make it unique in Google analytics. You can use pretty much anything you like to the end of your URL by adding a question mark followed by a key, in my case “u” for user, the equal sign (=) and “qrcode” for the identifying a valid QR code hit. So the full URL used to create the code is:

http://www.123vouchercodes.co.uk?u=qrcode

Note: Removed the hyperlink from this so that is doesnt skew my stats.

I can think of a 100 other cool ideas. For instance, putting them on all your stationary, business cards, posters, flyers, billboards, TV adverts, flash animations, PDF publications etc. Heck, you could even create a QR code pointing to your FaceBook or twitter page, why not huh. The possibilities are endless you must agree. Have a look at some more cool ideas for QR codes.

Just remember, do not attempt to explain what a QR code is, the explanation should always be revealed by actually scanning the code. I think an element of mystery generates some interest and should get people scanning. Perhaps you could mention that you need a smartphone with a barcode app to read a QR Code… just for the benefit of the uninformed minds you see.

This article is my contribution to push QR codes into mainstream use. To learn more about QR codes, their invention, history and interesting facts, have a read of the Wikipedia page with an in depth look at QR codes.

Have you noticed that most of my posts are usually have bullet points in them? I should stop shouldn’t I?

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