By Fiona Lin
Alarm Clock Xtreme To wake up or not to wake up, that is the question. That’s why humans invented alarm clocks. Yet often we “accidentally” disable our alarm and regular clocks don’t seem to be as useful as before. Why else are we always missing our Monday morning midterms? Alarm Clock Xtreme is our savior. Being the coolest alarm clock on earth, Alarm Clock Xtreme has many incredible features to prevent excessive snoozing and to get you out of bed. It can even automatically disable when it detects that you’re traveling to work or school. It has regular functions such as repeating alarms and random song alarms, but it also has crazy functions such as making you solve a math quiz correctly to make it stop ringing (the level ranges from easy to extremely difficult). Or you can shake it to turn it off (the number of times can be customized), or draw a certain symbol on your touch screen to make it stop. It can also give you a fake call saying: “You’re fired!!!” Available on Android only. SoundHound SoundHound provides a total solution to finding music anytime, anywhere, within seconds and with a nearly 100% matching rate. Every time you hear a melody on the radio or it suddenly flashes through your head, just tap on your phone and sing, hum, or hold your phone up to a speaker. SoundHound will name the tune. Forget the melody but remember the artist’s name or part of the lyrics? Speak a name or type in some of the lyrics, SoundHound identifies that, too. SoundHound has the ultimate singing and humming recognition technology. It supports a broad range of music from rap to classical, and songs from many different languages are also supported. SoundHound can link you to the iTunes store where you can purchase the song immediately, and it also supports email/Facebook/twitter sharing. Similar app for PC: midomi.com is a site established by the same company, with the same features as SoundHound. It provides more abundant music information such as album previews, videos, artist photos, and fan clubs. Available on Android, Appstore, and for personal computer. RunKeeper Staying in shape can be really hard to do. Fast food chains are all around us and fatty foods are common in most people’s lives. In a world full of high-calorie temptation, how do you slim down? Stop playing AngryBird on the couch; get on your running shoes and head outside, and let RunKeeper be your best workout partner. RunKeeper is an application available both for Android and at Appstore. It records your running speed, provides audio feedback and visual tracking of your exercise time, distance, speed, and calories. It also enables GPS function, tracking the path of your fitness activities on a map. What’s even smarter is that it allows you do design your own workout playlists. Though originally designed for running, there are many other activity types you can choose from, such as cycling, mountain biking, walking, downhill skiing, or even snowboarding. All activities will be recorded, allowing you to track your progress. Social network sharing is also available, you can always post your progress on Facebook and keep yourself motivated! Available on both Android and Appstore. Cool sports related apps: Nike Training Club (more than 60 training sessions, with audio and video instructions), Nike Boom (intense game and workout for men), iMapMyFITNESS (allows recordings of activity routes by GPS, enables live tracking of your friends routes) ScatterBrain Having trouble keeping track of ideas and notes? There are dozens of note-taking apps but none is as beautiful and focused as ScatterBrain. ScatterBrain is designed to help you capture thoughts quickly when they happen. It has a smooth and sleek interface and fast-loading speed, providing a simple but elegant platform for jotting down quick notes and to-dos. The interface is easy to use. You can jot down thoughts by tapping on the big plus sign at the bottom of the screen, entering a title and description, and then choosing a color. The main page displays a task-focused quick overview, with a search function on the top. You can organize your thoughts by colors or by last modified date. Available on both Android and Appstore. Other popular note-taking apps: all-in Notes (allows photo attaching, voice recordings, and color coding), Safe Note (allows protection of notes with a password, lets you select favorites or mark a note as urgent), Note Taker (write with your fingers on the screen and the app will take down your scribbles as a note) Fake-A-Call and Fake-A-Text Sometimes we find ourselves trapped in a boring date, in monotonous meetings, or dull conversations, and we wish that a superhero would show up at just the right time and fly us out of the room. Thanks to technology, now you can download your superhero to your phone for free. Fake-A-Call and Fake-A-Text allow your phone to fake an incoming call or text from your boss, your boyfriend, or a celebrity to get you out of bad dates, to impress your friends, or to play pranks on your enemies! Fake-A-Call allows you to schedule an incoming call, with a fully functional keypad, contact buttons, and customized background images. Of course, fake caller settings, calling time, and ring tone settings can be customized, and nine different voices can start talking to you when you answer the fake call. You can have Justin Timberlake calling you during lunch, with the “boyfriend” character speaking honey words to you. To make it appear more real, it also provides nine scripts to follow when you answer the phone. Simply by repeating what the voice says, the scripts can make you sound like a doctor, a lawyer, or just an important person that really needs to go. You can also record your own scripts customized for any special event. Fake-A-Text bears similar features. It also provides 100% real-looking displays, customization of sender settings, and incoming time; what’s more, you can even reply to the text and have it generate fake responses. Available on both Android and Appstore. Read Later Fast Every student shares the same habit when writing papers: web browsing, making bookmarks; checking Facebook, adding bookmarks, checking email, adding still more bookmarks. By the time you finally start reading the pages it’s past 2:00 a.m. and you find that your bookmark list is seriously flooded. Read Later Fast, a web-based application for both smartphone and computer, is your solution. Read Later Fast allows users to group bookmark folders with temporary links, it also enables offline reading and an archive for webpages. Similar to an email inbox, you can delete, drag, and drop to organize articles, and mark unread entries. When you come across a page that you want to read later, instead of adding it to your bookmarks, just right-click and save on Read Later, the article and its link will automatically be saved, enabling you to read both offline and online. Moreover, you can always sync to the application and access your webpages on different computers. Available on Android, Appstore, and the Chrome Web Store. a
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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