Category: Communication

Categories
Communication Tools

Vybe – Custom Vibrations [Android]

App Name: Vybe – Custom Vibrations [Android]

Cost: Free

Developer: Itchy Fingerz Digital Studios

App Market: Download Page

Description:

Create custom vibration patterns for your contacts and know who’s calling without looking at your phone. A unique experience where you can design distinct vibration patterns for your phone calls.

So, now if you are in the classroom, on the road or stuck in a meeting and find it inconvenient to take the phone out, you can still know who might be calling. And it’s pretty simple! Just create a vibration, assign it to a contact and know who’s on the other end of the line.

To put it simple just Create, Assign and Feel it.

Categories
Communication

Plustxt [Android]

App Name: Plustxt [Android]

Cost: Free

Developer: Plustxt

App Market: Download Page

Description:

Plustxt is a text messaging platform – optimized for languages. The app works worldwide but optimized for local languages. Plustxt is to cater to this niche – starting with a few Indian languages.

Plustxt also comes equipped with state of the art text messaging and privacy controls – to ensure the best texting experience for you. It also ties closely into the SMS inbox so that you can send all text messages from one inbox!

Currently support:
Gujarati
Hindi
Kannada
Malayalam
Marathi
Punjabi
Tamil

Categories
Communication Tools

Maluuba – Voice Recognition for Android

App Name: Maluuba – Voice Recognition for Android

Cost: Free

Developer: Maluuba Inc.

App Market: Download Page

Description:

Maluuba is an Android app that uses voice and touch interaction to provide users with direct answers to their queries. Currently it supports a variety of common tasks including checking the weather, viewing movie showtimes, and finding businesses in your area. Maluuba also helps you stay on track by making many organization tools accessible using voice including reminders, appointments and alarms.

They have  launched the app on Android and will be coming to iPhone and Windows Phone shortly.

In this TechCrunch article, Frederic Lardinois states that Maluuba “is the closest thing I’ve seen to a viable Siri competitor on Android“

Categories
Communication

YouMail Visual Voicemail for Android

App Name: YouMail Visual Voicemail

Description: Last month, YouMail announced that 75 Million People Have Now Used YouMail  (17.5 million unique users interacting with its service each month) and that they released of their new app for Android.

A primary feature of the app is the ability to easily access and assign any of YouMail’s millions of unique greetings (featuring President Obama, Will Ferrell and many others: http://www.youmail.com/community/greetings.do) to any contact in-app.

The Android app has now ported every major feature of the YouMail website to the app itself — including their last update’s introduction of in-app blocking of creepers — the first of YouMail’s smartphone apps to do so (YouMail is also available on BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Phone 7)

Some other features:

  • Scroll and play voice messages on any device
  • Visual caller ID
  • Smart greetings
  • Caller ditching
  • Total ownership
  • Easy contact backup and sync with Facebook: access your contacts on any device.

Cost: Free

Developer:  YouMail, Inc

Market: Google Play

FYI:

WhoAreYou a  feature-rich caller ID, call blocking and text blocking app for your Android phone has also  been recently updated. Some of the new features in WhoAreYou:

  • A completely new, smoother UI
  • Instant ID of all spam calls, as determined by YouMail/WhoAreYou’s extensive caller ID directory
  • Simpler tools to report spam calls
  • One-click text reply to incoming callers when the WhoAreYou user is unavailable
Categories
Communication Social

T4T – Twitter for Android Tablets

App Name:  T4T – Twitter for Tablets

Description: There are dozens of Twitter apps out there, but none of them really take advantage of a large screen, until now.

T4T uses the extra real estate to display entire timelines of each person you follow. Each timeline is left-right swipeable, is endlessly scrollable, and is displayed based on the person’s latest tweet from top to bottom.

Your account’s timeline is always in view. Perhaps the greatest benefit of using the extra real estate is having your status updates in a dedicated row at the top of the app’s screen. Tapping on any of the familiar functions like Reply, Retweet, Delete Tweet, Send with Mention, is instantly reflected in this row.

Other notable features include:  Mention Mode, where the screen switches to show the people who mention you in their tweets; Conversations shows the thread of replies of a tweet; Automatic Updates allows tweets to be updated in the background.

Cost: Free

Developer: Battle Mountain Inc

Market: Google Play

Video:

Categories
Communication Developers Social

Imo Instant Messenger for Android

App Name: Imo Instant Messenger

Cost: Free

Developer: Imo.im

Market: Google Play

Description:

You are you big into instant messaging that you probably heard of IMO. IMO is an instant messaging service that allows you to check in with friends on Facebook Messenger, Google Talk, Skype, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), ICQ/AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, and Myspace, Vkontakte.ru, Hyves and the imo network.  The free app has been designed to be easy to use and with one login you can access all of your IM accounts. With this Android app, you can have group messaging, share group photos, have multi-media attachments, chat history and more.

Recently the social platform Meebo was acquired by Google and anounced they will be shutting their doors in July.  Well, Imo.im, announced a new service where former Meebo users can join their network and download and import all previous chat logs and share histories directly to the imo platform. Pretty cool. As side note:  Users must download their chats from Meebo, prior to importing them onto the imo network. The tool can be used only if former users have already downloaded their previous chat history prior to the July 11th deadline when Meebo’s services were disabled.

This got me thinking so I reached out the Imo to learn a little more about them.

 

Q. Tell us about your company?
A. Based in Palo Alto, imo is a fast-growing startup founded and funded by one of the first ten employees at Google, Georges Harik and his brother, Ralph Harik. imo is building products that help millions of people around the world connect with their friends on any IM network. imo is free on the web, as well as Android, iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry platforms.

The inspiration for imo came from the Harik brothers’ desire for a better way to keep in touch with their family overseas. The imo web platform launched in 2007 and developed its Android app in 2010. Their mobile apps now have over 4 million downloads. imo has over 700,000 unique daily users who send over 50 million messages every day.

Q. How long has imo (the app) been around?
A. The Android app was launched in 2010 and currently has a 4.5 star rating. In 2011, we also launched a beta version of the app which offers new and experimental features for testing purposes.

Q. The app is free but are there ads?
A. Currently, there are no ads on the imo app.

Q. Why should someone use Imo?
A. Imo is an all-in-one communication tool that is easy and convenient. You can sign in with your existing IM accounts to message with friends, but imo also has several other features such as voice calling, chat groups, group photo sharing, voice IMs and an easily accessible chat history feature to make the app even more useful.  imo supports 12 different networks including imo, Skype, AIM, Facebook, GTalk, Yahoo, Hyves, MSN, Steam, Vkontakte, Myspace and Jabber.

Q. Can you give us more details on how Meebo customers can move over to Imo?
A. The transition to imo is as simple as downloading the imo app. With support for 12 different IM networks and popular features such as chat groups and voice IMs, we think imo will be a great alternative for former Meebo users. To make the transition to imo easier, we added a feature to import Meebo chat history though our web client. Instructions can be found on our blog.

So if you are a Meebo user or someone that uses IM a lot, looks like Imo would be an app that could help you out.

 

Categories
Communication Social

Making Talking Easier with TalkOver for Android

App: TalkOver

Developer:  Ice Dragon Trade and Logistics Limited

Cost: Free

Market: Android

Review:

TalkOver is a relatively new app on the Android Market that makes it easy to keep in touch with your friends or make new ones. To get  started with TalkOver, you simply sign in with Facebook login. Once your account is register you are ready to talk!

The TalkOver interface is very nicely done, pretty easy to figure out, and does not take up a lot of real estate on the screen. When you log in, the system has a small explanation on the screen of what each window does, but after a minute or two you should know your way around.

The app is divided into 3 feeds:

  • MyFeed – this is the chat feed for your feeds, or the chats you join.
  • Global Feed – this is the chat feed for all that is going on in TalkOver
  • Interesting- this area is broken down into various categories like WHL&NHL, Photography, Comics, Good Food, etc.

I definitely like having the separation of feeds, this way I can easily keep up with friends or topics I am chatting about vs having to sift through a huge global list. Also TalkOver will run in the background if you like and provide notifications of new responses or chats, so you won’t miss them. You can easily turn this off if you are no longer chatting.

To add a friend to TalkOver, you simply can choose them from the list of current Facebook friends and the app will send them an invite. Once they are on TalkOver they will appear in your TalkOver contact area. You can also add new folks from the global chat area. Simply click on their avatar and learn a bit about them.

To create a chat, you simply enter its name and add an image if you like. You are also provided the option to make it a private chat or share on Facebook. Once you create one, it will appear in your MyChat section. When you are done with a chat, you can delete it from your MyChat area and take is it.

TalkOver is really simple and an easy way to keep in touch with friends. Why use TalkOver vs. texting or Facebook directly? With TalkOver you are only chatting, so you can filter a lot of the stuff you seen in Facebook timelines. Also with TalkOver you are not using your minutes or SMS to have your messages sent. You can easily setup private chat and share photos. The app works very well, the chats and media load quickly, faster than Facebook on my Droid X.

Finally TalkOver has a desktop interface you access by log in at TalkOver.com. The web interface is very, very close to the same layout as the app. So you can real time chat with friends via the Web or app. Click on the image below to see a sample screenshot.

So if you are looking for an easy to use app to chat with friends or family, give TalkOver a try. The app is free and setup is quick. I particularly like the web interface giving me two ways to connect with folks.