 This episode of Android Invasion is brought to you by Mezzy Grill and Carpe Veeam. Hey and welcome to another episode of Android Invasion. Today we're going to go over, I think it's about 17 quick tips and tricks. It might be stuff that you know or stuff that you might have no idea about. So I just want to bring it to your attention and let's just get on with it. Let's go straight into it. The first one is if you have somebody that you frequently dial or that you text message, you might not know this but you can go on anywhere in your home screen, tap in open space on your home screen. Tap open space on your home screen and then you're going to go to shortcuts. And then it's going to give you a bunch of different options. You can make a shortcut for just about anything including bookmarks, certain settings, directions. It's really handy for directions too, I found. But what we want to do in this specific instant, you could do a direct dial or direct message. So you could add Sally Sue or whoever or Jiminy Cricket if you want to. You could direct message them, direct dial them. So it'll open the dialogue to dial them or to message them. And then the next one is you could also do your favorite bookmarks and whatnot. So you just go into the bookmarks and then you could choose from your bookmarks. It's a bookmarks for the default browser. So just keep that in mind that there's any that you want to add to the home screen. Another cool one that many people don't know it seems is folders. If you just hold on a open space again, click on folders. Oh, that's widgets. Let's go back there for one second. So I'm holding again. I'm going to folders. And here we could make a new folder. I have an app called AK Notepad where I have a bunch of just random notes style jot down. So that's pretty cool that has that in there. You can put all contacts, Bluetooth, contacts with phone numbers, Pandora stations, some Wikipedia stuff, which is like something for Wikipedia on your mobile. So you can make a new folder and you could pretty much put anything you want in there. It could be all links. You could even edit the name if you want to, which is pretty cool. So you know, hey, this is people from work or what have you. And then next tip is for file management. Make it a snap. A very popular one is called Astro. I use one called File Expert. What's cool about File Expert is if you have super user or if you have root on your phone, it's going to allow you to get into like the nitty gritty of the file system in there. So you'll be able to access. It's not for everybody for that specific feature. But whether you're rooted or not, it does do cool things. You could take a look at the network. You could take a look at apps that are installed. You could also turn your phone into a FTP or just web sharing like or you could even do through Bluetooth. But what the web sharing does is it gives you a URL where you could access, you know, everything that's on your phone, sort of like a file browser. And you can do this from any browser at home. If you do FTP sharing, you could just use any FTP client. And you could also make shortcuts. So that's pretty cool. And with the Bluetooth, this is if you have another Bluetooth device, possibly your laptop or netbook and you want to share files that way. So it makes sharing the files. If you don't have USB cable with you makes it super easy. So that's why I love it. Also lets you do a lot of crazy things. You could look for network shares and things of that nature. You could add certain folders to favorites. Has some nice functionality stuff built in there, as you can see. And then for the next tip, we also have, you might not know this, but if you have an iPod or something like that and you want to sync your music, you could do so using something called Double Twist. It's able to sync your iTunes music and playlists. And pretty much all your music on your computer, whether it's on iTunes or not, you could do so from within Android. Actually, don't use iTunes. So I don't have that installed. I just drag and drop and then I use Power Amp. Basically, Power Amp lets me do everything based on folders. So I'll do a more in-depth review on Power Amp for music. Remember, Double Twist is if you have iTunes or anything similar like that and you want to manage your music. Another cool thing is if you use Google Voice, you could send free text messages. You could also, especially since we're on Android, it's obviously a Google product. So they integrate it very well. You could have all your voicemail go into there, voicemails transcribed. Many times I have prepaid service. Sometimes I forget to pay. It's not that I don't have the money or something. But sometimes it's just so busy, I just totally forget. So maybe I'm a few hours or a day without phone service. I still have internet connectivity, so I can still text people and stuff, which is pretty cool. The voicemails, like I said, are transcribed. You could do a lot of cool stuff with it. You could change your number. You could have a Google Voice number. So that's pretty cool. Whoops. We'll have to edit that out. And then another cool thing is if you have internet connectivity, you could use something called fringe. Fringe allows you to use basically like unbilled phone calls. You could use Skype to make phone calls through it. You could use Google Talk to make phone calls. And also SIP. SIP is something like a Magic Jack or they have SIP boxes. Basically, it acts as a SIP gateway and allows you to dial SIP numbers. So if you have anybody that you know that uses Skype Google Talk or has a SIP number, you could dial them without paying for any minutes. So that's pretty cool, especially with all the locations that have free Wi-Fi nowadays. Then we have a pretty cool app, which I'm sure a lot of people will appreciate. It's called Dial Zero. What Dial Zero allows you to do is basically you could search for different big companies that you call and it's usually a hassle to get in touch with them. So it'll allow you to get directly to who you need to speak with without going through the operator or the stupid tree menus. Yesterday I was trying to call Verizon and kept on pressing zero and it's like you don't have to press zero, you can just tell me. Well, I'm pressing zero, so I don't have to tell you anything. So Dial Zero is definitely the way to go. It has something pretty cool called most, what is it? Oh, head to head, not most anything, but it does head to head stuff. So that's pretty cool for who has the best service and whatnot. So it's a pretty cool app. It's called Dial Zero. Check it out on the Android market. Another cool one is keep annoying callers away by routing them directly to your voicemail. And the first is to open up the person's profile in your contacts list, which I don't want to do here because I don't want to reveal my contact list at the moment. But basically what you're doing is once you're in the contact list, you're hitting the menu button and then from the menu button you're going to go to options and then you're going to check the incoming calls to voicemail. It's going to be a little box. You just check that and then anytime that person calls, it's going to go directly to voicemail, which makes it a pretty awesome feature. And then also very important, secure your phone. My phone is not that secure. I just hit menu twice and then I have access to everything on my phone, which is not cool. In order to secure it, we have a couple of different options for Android. So let me just go to menu and then I'm going to hit settings. And from there we are going to go to location and security. From there we're going to set up where it says screen lock. Now you can also set up a SIM card lock and when you do that, it's going to lock your SIM card with a PIN number. So let's say you restart your phone. They're not going to be able to make any phone calls or send any text or use the internet or do anything that requires you to connect to T-Mobile, AT&T, SIMPLE Mobile, whoever you use. So that's pretty cool. I used to have that set up but then I just got lazy. So we're going to go to set up a pattern. You do a pattern, a PIN or a password. I'm just going to do a pattern. It's going to explain it how it works and whatnot. It's pretty simple. You just pick whatever pattern and then I just hit continue. It's going to ask you to do it again. I think this was it. Confirm. Cool. So I don't want to use that anymore. So we're just going to do that. Then for the next tip, it's to activate the Android Power Strip. Now I have a different one because I'm running Cyanogen mod, but we could do that. Android is going to have the stock Android. It's going to have a more basic one. If you're running like a HTC sense phone, it might have a slightly different power meter as well. Obviously, depending on what kind of apps you install, they're all going to have different widgets. As you can see in the home screen that in, I have a Bitcoin related widget. But we're going to go to power control. What's pretty cool about the Cyanogen mod one is that it gives you options on what you want to include, which makes it very handy, especially if you want easy access to what you're going to be controlling. But when you're on stock Android, it's just going to provide a basic one. But the basic one is pretty cool. It has more options than this one over here. So this has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, that sound. So the stock ones will be something similar, might have an option or two more. And that'll help you a lot if you want to disable battery killers like GPS, screen, Wi-Fi, all that good stuff. And then if you're as fortunate as I am and you have a QWERTY keyboard, the most amazing thing in the world is this little keyboard. It makes the phone that much better. A cool thing you could do is we could do basically shortcuts or what do they call them? Yeah, they're like keyboard shortcuts. And I believe you could do that through applications if I'm not mistaken. Let me just make sure. Yes, it's under applications and quick launch. And you could assign, you know, if you want to open up the browser, you hold the search key and then B, contact search key and C. You could assign different applications, which is pretty cool. They have for email, calendar. They have a whole bunch of stuff that you can set here. You could really go wild and make yourself that much more efficient. So that's pretty cool to have, especially if you have a keyboard. You know, another one is to delete any apps that you don't use. If you have something like File Expert, File Expert has a way to uninstall apps. If you don't have File Expert where you're going to do is you're going to hit menu. You're going to go to settings again. And then we're going to go down to applications again, which we were just at. And then we're going to go ahead and manage applications. Now these are going to be all the apps that you downloaded over here versus downloaded. So anything you downloaded is going to show up over here. Now if you do all this is going to show some system apps as well as some random stuff. So you might not be able to uninstall everything, but you should be able to install anything that's bloated and you don't use, especially if you don't use it that often, you know, don't do it. And then we have pretty cool. This is one of my favorite things. If you're running anything before Froyo, pretty much all the Android versions have this, but you're going to hold the home key and then it's going to do the last eight apps that you had. This is on Froyo. So if you're on Froyo, which is 2.3, it's going to have eight. If you're on a stock Android that's anything below Froyo, it's going to show only four, but on the Android has eight. So if you're in the PSI engine mod, you could adjust that and you could get even more out of it. And then let's see. Oh, another cool thing is you could let's go into here. We go into settings and there's some like display animations and things of that nature that we could get rid of. So we're going to go into display over here. And you see they have like auto rotate screen. They have animations here. So I have all animation set. If you have a slower or older phone, you could hit no animations and you should see a marked improvement and just how it reacts to everything because it doesn't have to draw those animations. And then we have something which if you have a phone that has its flash enabled, now iPhones, they're not going to have this problem because they don't have flash. So, you know, thankfully we have this. So if you go into the phone and we hit, well, let's just go into any browser. This is on the stock browser on something like opera. It's always going to have a setting. If we go into settings and if we go into advanced, whoops, that's privacy. If we go into advanced, it's going to have a doubly flash. So it's going to say click to play disabled or enable. You could disable it. You could click to play or you can enable it. So you're not on a flash site, like a video site or something like that. That's not YouTube. You know, it just loads it up. It lets you know that it's a video file or a video flash. You just hit play and, you know, load it up. This makes loading the page much faster and much smoother. And that's pretty much it. You know, if you, let's just, first of all, for the tips for bringing it to us, let's thank our sponsors. You know, first of all, Mezzy Grill, m-e-z-e-grill.com, where Mediterranean food meets modern flavor. They have great hummus. It's amazing. They have a whole bunch of different kinds of foods. You get in line, you get served really quick. They accept Bitcoin, which if you don't know what that is, check it out. They're now serving breakfast. They're just a couple blocks south of the very famous Columbus Circle. So if you're ever in the area, check it out. And they have worldwide franchising opportunities available. It doesn't matter where you are worldwide. If you want to open your own Mezzy Grill, you could certainly do so. And it's also brought to you by CarpeVM. That's c-a-r-p-e-v-m.com. Seize your market, say it with video. Charlie from CarpeVM. He'll be with you every step of the way to build up your image. Anything that has to do with your brand, your icon, whatever you want to push out there. Charlie has a very creative mind, and he'll walk you through the steps that you need to build that image, to build that brand. So check them out. CarpeVM. It's video on the web. Ideal way to engage your viewers. So hope you found these tips very helpful. You know, another thing that we implemented site-wide for all our shows is podcasting. So if you have iTunes on your Android phone, on your PC, subscribe. You can subscribe through email as well. Email us androidatonlyonetv.com. If you have any questions, any suggestions or anything like that, OnlyOneTV, of course, is spelled out, and that's Android Invasion at OnlyOneTV. I apologize about that. So Android Invasion at OnlyOneTV. To check us out, subscribe through your podcaster. Check out the podcast. If you can't watch the video, you can download the video as well. So check all of that out and we'll see you next time. Take care, guys.