Android App Sale: Top Apps For Rs.5.13only

The Android Market just notched its ten-billionth app download, and to celebrate, Google is offering some its most popular apps for 10cents apiece. Its not often that large companies run software promotions in India. Most promotions are US & Canada only. But not Google. It offering the same deal to its India android users and an app is just Rs.5.13only. Yes, you got it right, 5 rupees 13 paisa each for the next ten days. Ten new apps will be added each day, from now until December 16.

So head down to the Google marketplace now and get apps like Soundhound Infinity for just Rs5.13. Read the official press release here.

Connecting Chromebook (Cr-48) to India GSM Networks

So you own a Chromebook and want to use your mobile GSM network to connect. I used a Cr-48 in conjunction with a BSNL and a Vodafone SIM to connect and it worked very easily.(Screenshots are for BSNL)

Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+t (Ctrl, Alt and t together)(Don’t press the + key :-D). This will open the crosh shell (A black screen with crosh written).
2. Type the following command: modem_set_carrier Generic UMTS and press enter. Please ensure to type exactly as written. After a few seconds it will show you the output.
3. Now type exit and press enter to go back to the Chrome GUI.
4. Restart the Chromebook.
5. You will see BSNL/Vodafone IN in the mobile networks list.

Connect & Enjoy!
It also shows a list of other available wireless networks. So should work with AIRTEL, TATA DoCoMo, Spice/Idea and others. Do let me know in case of any issues.

Note: I work with Chome OS in developer mode. Maybe you need to get into developer mode to carry out the steps. There is a Chome OS help page for booting into developer mode which Offers a step-by-step guide here.

Saavn Music App Review

There are 1000’s of free radio’s on the internet and then there’s Saavn Music. Available in two flavors; online as well as an app for android. I took the app for a spin. Set-up was a breeze. Download saavn from the android market and you're ready to go. The application is just 605KB. It's light enough but does not have an option to ‘move to SD card’ so uses up precious memory space on my Google Nexus One.

The main screen is simple and has 3 buttons at the bottom play (for the player window), saavn (for the main screen) and search (for song search). While on the main screen the search button is useless as there is already a search bar on top. The player interface too, is uncomplicated and has buttons for previous, pause/play, next, shuffle, loop. Save playlist and delete all songs in a playlist. Just choose a standard predefined playlist and we’re good to go. But we hardly like the commonly available songs, for if we did, we would just listen to one of the thousands of internet radio stations available on shoutcast.

This is where saavn music shines. Just search for a song and saavn music will find it. Just don’t try international music. Saavn music is Bollywood music through and through. I tried ‘Ghoda – Daler Mehendi’ and it didn’t show. Keep selecting the songs by clicking on them and they will keep getting enqueued one after another.

You can save this list as a playlist in order to listen to it later, but in order to do that you need to login. Just login using your facebook credentials (everyone has facebook, right?). Well even if you’re a Cro-Magnon with no facebook login you’re in luck, they have an option to create a free login as well. I used the facebook option and was asked to give my playlist a name. While logging in with facebook the app asks for three permissions to access facebook feeds and send e-mail. Choose select none if you are paranoid about security. You don’t need to login to listen to music.

Just one serious inconvenience I faced in the app was rearranging songs in my playlist. It currently does not allow you to change the order of songs in the playlist. It simply maintains the order in which I selected them. So choose carefully. I’m sure this will be taken care of as this app evolves. Also the default mobile data streaming rate is set to 16kbps. If you’re on 2G data plan then that’s the way to go but for wi-fi or 3G go to settings and change to high quality(128kbps). If song pauses while on this setting then lower as per your internet speed.

If you’re into Bollywood music then Saavn music is a great app. Good Music, lightweight & easy to use.

Score: 3.5/5

Remove Unwanted Ads with Adblock and Google Chrome

Google search is free. So are a lot of other services on the internet. Advertising helps pay for this free stuff that we get online. But we’re living in a world driven by advertising and frankly sometimes its overkill. But if you’re using chrome then you’re in luck. Chrome has multiple free tools to help us get rid of unwanted ads.

Adblock is one of the chrome extensions that remove advertisements from web pages. To install Adblock go to the Chrome web store. You’ll find this app in the popular section or you can search for it in the search bar provided at the left side of the page. You’ll also find Adblock Plus which provides similar functionality but I’ve been using Adblock and I’ve yet to face any issues with it, so I choose that.

Click on the “add to Chrome” option, a small window will pop up to confirm the install and warn you that this data can access your data on all websites and all your tabs and browsing data.

Click on install and you’re ready to go. Once installed, it will open a new window with just one configuration option.

Just click on the “that was easy” button. It will take you to two more screens, the last one will prompt you to donate to the creator of this software extension (and you should) but for now just close the browser window and you’re all done.

Open any page and see the difference.

Enjoy the web. Ad-FREE.