I started using Foursquare few years ago when it was just introduced into the market. I enjoyed checking-in and watching what my friends are doing. It also helped few times to gather together with friends I haven’t seen in a while. We checked in about the same time in the same mall and decided to get together for a coffee since we were all in the same area. It was fun, but after some time I was busy with something else and forgot about this app.
When I checked it out few months ago, I was surprised to see how man new features were added on Foursquare. Now, it’s like a TripAdvisor of new restaurants and other places. You can find tips and reviews, photos, wi-fi passwords (now you don’t have to ask waiters). This help so much to find out about new places and see how the ‘old’ ones are doing, if you haven’t been there in a while.
Also, thank to Foursquare, restaurants and other places are being more conscious about the level of the service they offer as it can really impact their reputation.
Now, let’s see how it looks. This is how the main screen looks. You can see what your friends are doing, check-in, search new places, see Notifications and access Settings, switch between Local and Worldwide and see your friends on the Map.
Here is how notifications look.
You can edit the Settings for Notifications. For example, I don’t like to get e-mails or reminders and messages on my phone, so I set all my notifications to show up only when I open the app.
This is the Map, if you have a lot of friends all around the world you can find them all here.
This is how the page for a specific place looks. It features pictures, tips, friends that have been there and other information.
Here is the Menu where you can use Profile, To-do list (cool thing to add the places you want to check out! Me and my friends always seem to forget the names once I quickly need to decide where to go) and some other features.
This is how the profile looks.
Badges feature is also kinda cool. The more you explore the city and more you check-in, you can unlock different badges and if you check-in a lot at a specific place you can become it’s Mayor! Woo-hoo! 🙂 Also, restaurants post a lot of offers for frequent customers (check-iners).
If you want to become my friend on Foursquare, here is the link and please let me know in the Comments what do you think about the app. I’d love to know!
I know I’ve written a lot about apps lately. I guess I’ve played around with my phone and iPad a lot lately and been procrastinating other things that need to be done. I’m supposed to work on my painting, but I was waiting for the previous layer of oil paint to dry and was making these useful (I hope) posts about the applications I love.
I’ve been amazed by the ‘Divergent’ movie when I saw it couple of weeks ago and really wanted to post a short version of a trailer on my Instagram account (hey! are you following me there? Blog account – @1happyblog, personal – @natella111). I was looking for an app that would let me extract the video from YouTube and I came across MxTube. It is easy to use, very fast, but what really made me love this app is that it can play the videos from YouTube even if you switch to another app / lock the phone. YouTube app doesn’t let you do that and if you need to answer an important call or reply to a message, when you come back, the app restarts and you lose the video / point where you left off.
So, here’s how it looks.
You can toggle between Recommended and Subscriptions, just as you would on a mobile or web versions of YouTube, if you have an account there. You can also see Popular and other categories.
You can also select a specific region.
Next tab is your Account with all your Favorite videos and playlists.
You can start playing any video.
And switch to horizontal mode to see the video.
If you touch the icon, highlighted with an arrow, you will be asked in what quality you want to save your video and your video will start downloading in Cache window.
Search option is also available.
And here is the Cache window.
After the video has been downloaded, you can save it to Camera Roll.
And here is the More tab.
This is it! Let me know if you tried this app and what are your opinions in the Comments below.
English: symbol for mobile ringtone (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If you’re using an iPhone, you probably came across the problem with custom ringtones. On all my earlier phones, it was quite easy – I just selected the music from my library as a ringtone.
Unfortunately, Apple made it quite painful to do that. One way to do it is to buy the ringtone from iTunes Store. But, as much as I respect copyright and paying artists for the music and so on, paying $1.29 for 30 second ringtone (the same amount you pay for the track) is a bit too much. Especially, if you have different ringtones for different contacts + you like to change them often, as I do, cause I get annoyed with the same melody after short time.
Luckily, there is another way to fix this problem. It is not very short, but it works. There are several apps that cut the song from your library and turn it into a ringtone. I prefer Ringtones app for it’s easy interface and video with understandable instructions.
This is the main window when you open the app.
After you tap the button, it takes you to your music library.
After you selected the song you would like to turn into a ringtone, you have 2 options -> you can create Ringtone or Text message tone.
Then you slide your finger over a sound-wave to capture the best part of the song. Touch Play to make sure you’re happy with the result and then touch the Save button.
On the next screen you see your ringtone being saved.
That’s it!
Now you have to do annoying part on the computer, but it’s not difficult. See the video below.
Hope the info was useful for you and have a great day!
I’m getting more and more lucky each day – because there’s another music app that I’ve enjoyed lately – Deezer.
Deezer is a good alternative to Spotify, if you also live in one of the countries where Spotify is not available. It has a good choice of artists and albums, maybe their library is not as huge as Spotify’s, but there’s still a lot of music to listen to.
It is easy-to-use and you can use it in offline mode (lovely isn’t it?). You can like songs, artists, create playlists – most of the basic features that are available in any music player. And there’s also Flow -> it plays music similar to what you liked. And there are also different radio channels based on genre.
You can try the app first few months for free and then sign up for a paid subscription if you like.
This is the main screen and the Flow feature I mentioned. You can also start the Search from here.
This is how the menu looks.
This is Explore window. You can browse by genre and regions.
This is the Charts menu. You can browse by Tracks, Albums, Artists and Playlists.
Here is Radio Channel menu.
This is the Setting window. You can toggle between Online and Offline mode from here.
The App plays music in the background even if the app itself is not active (huge advantage!) and this is how the lock screen looks.
Bond…….James Bond…….on the job! (Photo credit: ClaraDon)
Love this classic theme from the greatest spy movie of all times!
The “James Bond Theme” is the main theme of all the James Bond films and has featured in every one since ‘Dr. No’ in 1962.
Monty Norman has been credited with writing the “James Bond Theme”, and has received royalties since 1962. Norman collected around £485,000 in royalties between the years 1976 and 1999[1] For Dr. No, the tune was arranged[2] by John Barry, who would later go on to compose the soundtracks for eleven James Bond films.
SoundCloud recently became one of my favorite iPhone apps. I’ve been registered on SoundCloud.com for a while now, but I used it mainly to upload my mixes and didn’t come around to try the app.
Now, SoundCloud serves as a great online music player, when I get tired of my music on the phone and want to explore something new.
SoundCloud has tons of music, especially electronic and you can follow your favorite artists and djs to stay up to date with their latest songs and mixes.
Also, one of the features I especially enjoy, is that the search is not limited to tracks only, you can find playlists and mixes. For example, if you want to find artists that have similar music taste with you, you can enter the track name that you enjoy in the search field, and you will not get only the track itself, but also all mixes where this track has been used. I found a lot of great djs that might be not so popular and mainstream, but still pretty awesome and the names I didn’t hear about before.
One thing I especially love about SoundCloud, that it doesn’t eat that much traffic as YouTube does and you can switch to another app or lock the screen and the music will still play in the background.
This is how the lock screen looks, it has main play / rewind/ fast-forward and volume buttons and album artwork.
This is my dashboard or Stream, featuring all likes and uploads from the Labels / Artists I follow.
This is Now Playing screen -> You can Like, Replay, Add to Playlist, Share and view Info from here. Sometimes Downloads are also available.
This is the same screen in horizontal position – I love how the sound wave looks.
This is my profile. Here’s the link, so you can follow me, if you wish.
This is how the Search Tab looks.
And this is my Activity feed with notifications.
Let me know how you like the SoundCloud app and have an awesome day!
I’m really glad and thankful for the opportunity to share the things that amaze me, interest me and touch my heart with the world through this blog!
And if, by doing this, my posts inspire other people, that’s just amazing!
Wishing One Happy Blog long life, community of amazing followers and other great bloggers, interesting posts, prosperity and much fun along its journey!
I don’t have to say much about this track – just enjoy smooth vocals, really nice old-school beats and synths!
This new track from Akabu features the soaring neo soul croons of Alex Mills (who you might recognize from Miguel Campbell’s ‘Something Special’).
The Joey Negro Strip Mix is unashamedly feel-good with its bouncing, skewed and spraying synths and driving bassline, with pristine production putting many imitators to shame.
What I love about drawing with pastels is the softness of the material and easiness of mixing and shading. What I dislike about pastel drawings is that you have to be very careful with them and store it securely behind the glass because unlike oil paintings pastel drawing are very prone to damage.
Now here is the story of what happened to my drawing of a lovely lady in the hat. Some time ago I spilled some water on it by accident and I almost cried when I saw how much effort has been wasted.
But then I gathered myself together and decided to correct and cover all the spots that were left by the spilled water.
Moral #1: Always frame and store properly all the drawings and paintings right after I finish them.
Moral #2: Everything happens for a reason. While covering and reworking on damaged spots, I noticed few other things that could be corrected / done better, so there’s always a room for improvement! And if I see every situation as a challenge, not a problem, I can always find a blessing and get an awesome outcome!
Now, I like the corrected version of the drawing even better than the original. And what do you think? I’m posting before and after pictures for comparison. Please let me know your opinion in the comments below!
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