Monday, June 24, 2013  

[Beep!]

Three posts ago, I posted a photo of the NFC tags I ordered. After having had some time to play with them, I feel that everyone whose phones can support them should get them. If not, get the NFC app, at least.

In truth, you don't really need the tags to enjoy the benefits. I'll explain why in a bit.

I don't know how other people use their phones, but for myself, the way I want my phone to alert me when calls and messages come in are quite important. In the past, when I used Nokia phones, they came with a rather nifty feature called Profiles. All the phone's possible alerts are stored there. You can have a profile for work, home, when you're out and about, and one where you're in a cinema. Things like that. It's very convenient and all I need to switch my alerts is to switch to the right profile.

Fast forward to now. Most of us don't use Nokia phones anymore. I'm using an Android phone right now and one thing I really missed was the Profiles. There isn't any concept of this by default for Android. I won't go into the details, but for my current HTC One X, I need to visit four different places to change the settings whenever I want to switch my "Profiles". It's really a bit of a hassle.

That's where the NFC Task Launcher app comes in. I can set up the tasks to correspond to the changes to the settings that I need to make, and manually trigger them even without any NFC tags. This is the reason why I said you don't really need the NFC tags to enjoy the benefits. The app can change a whole lot more besides alert settings which I won't go into right now. With this app, I am basically back to the days of when I was using a Nokia phone, being able to switch my alert "Profiles" very quickly.

Before I go on, I must say that the app is still not perfect. Of the four places I would need to go to change my settings manually, the app could only make changes to two of them. For the other two places, I now no longer manually change the settings. I just leave them the way they are, and it's good enough for me.

However, if you'd like to take it one step further and if your phone supports NFC, you should get your hands on some NFC tags. The tasks you saved under NFC Task Launcher can be automatically triggered when you scan the tags. Is it very much different from manually triggering the tasks? I would have to say no. After all, you still need to unlock the screen first. By doing so, you are just two touches from trigger the tasks manually (from a widget on the home screen), but scanning them is just so much cooler.

Bottom-line is this. If you often make the same changes to your settings depending on where you are (like for alerts), check out NFC Task Launcher. This app is capable of that and much more, which I won't go into. If you'd like to take it one step further, get some NFC tags to trigger the tasks instead of manually triggering them.

^^^ by Locksley @ 12:54 PM. 0 comments.
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Saturday, June 22, 2013  

[When the PSI hit 401 yesterday...]

^^^ by Locksley @ 8:24 AM. 0 comments.
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[Sickening...]

I think it is most sickening to walk into a retail shop and find yourself surrounded by people who don't speak the same language. All the shoppers are foreign and so are all the staff. What the hell happened to my country? This is not the country I served NS to defend. This is not the country I suffered a torn and slipped disc for.

^^^ by Locksley @ 8:22 AM. 0 comments.
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Thursday, June 20, 2013  

[They're here!]

^^^ by Locksley @ 12:25 AM. 0 comments.
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Saturday, June 15, 2013  

[Nom nom nom...]


^^^ by Locksley @ 1:27 PM. 0 comments.
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Wednesday, June 12, 2013  

[A good night's sleep...]

...has eluded me for the past two nights. I've had very vivid nightmares. Hope tonight will be different.

^^^ by Locksley @ 6:56 AM. 0 comments.
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