TECH / APPS SPECIAL ............Apps For All Future

Apps For All Future
 

Three apps to help you customise, get weather forecasts and screen calls

Customise It

If you are getting frustrated waiting for the 4.2 update to Jelly Bean on your Android phone, take heart from the various apps that simulate some of the features from it. One of them is AntTek Quick Settings which gives you an additional pull-down to the right of your regular notifications panel.

This is entirely customisable. You can choose to fill the whole thing with the shortcuts, settings, contacts and apps of your choosing for quick access. Although Samsung’s phones already have a taskbar like feature, I added this for good measure. The best part is being able to put your contacts. You could even fill the whole screen with them. You could just as well place them on a home screen, but this way it leaves your home screen free for other stuff while at the same time giving you one-swipe access to the contacts.
 

What's It Like?

An app for forecasting weather? Well, that's one way to go. Yahoo is getting app savvy and you can see that straight off if you download Yahoo Weather on your iPhone. 

Now, the weather in some parts of India doesn’t change that much from day to day. It’s hot hot hot and then it rains rains rains. But in some cities, you never can tell, and that’s where weather apps may be more interesting. This app draws upon Flickr photos (which also belongs to Yahoo) for beauty. Against the background of a beautiful picture, you can see weather information for cities of your choice. Swipe left to change cities, swipe down to get more info. You have hourly breakdown, sun and moon time, pressure, wind, etc. Now, all we need is more Flickr photos for Indian cities to avoid duplicates.
 

Screen My Calls

Give truecaller a try on your smartphone. It’s available for every platform so you should find it easily enough.  Truecaller works with an ever-growing database of phone numbers and names across the world. If you’re a user and you get a first time call from someone and save the number to your contact list or even blacklist, the number joins the Truecaller database. So yes, the app gets your phone list, but it’s so useful that users are fine with the privacy angle. When you get a call, Truecaller pops up the name and from where they’re calling.  It lets you search for a name or address anywhere in the world, but this is a hit-and-miss until the database grows and refines. It also has call blocking and blacklisting including the option to pre-block calls and SMS from known spammers. 

 

Mala Bhargava- See more at: http://www.businessworld.in/news/science-and-technology/app-reviews/apps-for-all-future/899318/page-1.html#sthash.PbxyWuWb.dpuf