Black Friday is upon us shortly and with the knowledge and experience of staying up all night in lines and malls, I have a few tips for the newbies among us. Even if you’re used to staying on lines or staying up all night, some folks get irked when they are being towed around by a slow shopper. Don’t worry, TheBlueDot is here for you in your time of need. No, we don’t have some time machine or magical device that will just deliver all the items you need for the holidays. But we do have a few tips and tricks for those not used to the stress of late night shopping and slow tow shoppers.
Nov 23
Sep 27
My name may say “androidman” but I appreciate all types of phones, especially when they contribute to some healthy competition. With that said, I asked around and came up with our top five iPhone camera apps. The iPhone has a pretty impressive camera and with so many apps out on the market it can be a bit overwhelming when choosing which one is right for you, or even worth your time.
1. Instagram
Don’t you miss those classic Polaroid pictures? The lightly faded look, slightly washed out colors and odd lighting gives it a great classic look. Instagram catches that, and more, with several photographic options to go through. After taking a picture, you have some filter options that can make your picture look like something out of the 70′s or any classic camera. It’s fun, simple, and makes any picture look great on your iPhone.
2. Hipstamatic
This app is a tribute to the original Hipstamatic 100 from the early 80′s. Much like Instagram it has several options to choose from. You can choose a lens, flash and film to give you almost endless combinations. You also have the ability to upload your pictures directly from your iPhone to Facebook or Flickr from within the program itself.
3. Photoshop.com Mobile (Free)
If you’re Photoshop.com user, this app is a must have. Not only does it offer you 2GB of data online for photos and videos, it also features some of the best photo processing options of any free program on the iPhone. Cropping, saturation, blurs and much much more. Considering this app is 100% free, there really is no reason this isn’t already on your phone.
4. ColorSplash
This app is both simple and fun. ColorSplash takes your photographs and converts them into black and white. From there you can choose which part of the picture is in color and which isn’t. Make a table full of fruits all black and white, but leave one lone apple a bright red to make it really pop. There are several brushes to choose from when bringing color back to your pictures giving you even more control over how your colors pop.
5. Darkroom (Free)
Ever have trouble getting a landscape picture with your iPhone just right, just to have something move and ruin a good photograph? This app takes that worry out of your hands. It waits until the conditions are just right before snapping a picture, lessening blur and flares. This app isn’t really for action shots or parties, but perfect for landscapes and portraits. This app is for those planned pictures you want to be just right.
If you don’t have an iPhone and are shopping around, check out thebluedot.net for some great deals on the iPhone 4G and much much more!
May 11
The official results are in, and the first quarter sales figures for 2010 are significantly in favor of Google’s Android smart phone. The war has waged for quite some time between Apple’s iPhone–with apps that pale in comparison to the amount of hype backing it up–and Google’s Android which has dedicated its operating system to various phone models and carriers across the board.
The iPhone, as many of you know, is paired only with AT&T service–and while Apple pushes its weight around the market, it rests firmly in the corner where only AT&T users and Mac Geeks dwell.
AT&T is big–really big. But Verizon is much bigger. You know those “coverage maps” you see in all the ‘Verizon VS AT&T‘ commercials? Those attempt to illustrate a whopping 92.8% of Verizon’s customers enjoying a relatively limitless wireless coverage zone.
iPhone’s biggest claim to fame is the App Store, featuring obscene numbers of user and professionally created applications for just about everything you’d ever want to do–from grocery shopping, to making fart-noises on the bus. The Google Android is gaining speed, however. They’re up to a healthy 50,000 applications and counting–and I believe they’ve even hosted their own fart-noise apps, so…good news there!
Because of Verizon’s dominant network, they have become a huge sponsor of Google’s Android–providing them with lots of advertising and marketing funds.
The last–and probably most important–factor that pushes the Android ahead is the pricing. Where the average price for a smart phone in 2010 is around $599 (retail price), the top-tier iPhones can be as pricey as $999 (used iphones for less than $200 and cheap droid phones). Because Google has the freedom to pick and choose its carriers and hosts models in varying price ranges, they have the potential to dominate every market.
The Android’s sales have outfoxed the iPhone, but not by much. With the first quarter percentages for the Android being 28%, and the iPhone’s being 21%, it is still a close race…but it is still only a race for 2nd place.
It should be no surprise that Reasearch in Motion’s Blackberry is still king of the smart phones with a first quarter sales rate of 36 percent. Across the board, new and refurbished Blackberrys make a huge impact on smart phone sales. They are efficient, inexpensive, and part of the largest networks in the country.
So, for now, Blackberry watches as Google and Apple duke it out–but there’s a lot more time left in 2010–and something tells me that the iPad won’t be the last tech gadget people are talking about this year.
Sources: Yahoo! Finance | ARS Technica | Android Community | Boy Genius Report
–Alex
