Call and SMS Firewall (Android/WM/iPhone)
Ever get random phone calls during a meeting or an exam, just to realize they are telemarketing cold calls, persuade you to buy something you absolutely don’t need whatsoever? We all do, and their bombardment seems to be unending. Besides yelling the four-letter words to the malicious talk-time killers, we can take a more proactive approach – call firewall.
Firewall for different phone operating systems
All software/apps below have the ability to block specific numbers, block specific prefixs, and block SMS.
Android
aFirewall – This Android app has a special “scene mode”, where different call block policies and be applied throughout specific times of day and days of week. Can be downloaded in Market, the free version should be enough for normal use.
Tested on Google G1, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, Motorola Milestone
Alternate choice: Panda Firewall
Windows Mobile
Call Firewall 1.4 – This WM software is a freeware. Can automatically add blocked call as an Appointment (editable in Notes). The full name of the software is “Novan Digital Labs CallFirewall”, just search Google for a download.
Tested on LG KS20, HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Diamond2 Topaz, HTC HD2 Leo, Samsung Omnia i900
Alternate choice: Mcleaner 1.4
iPhone
MCleaner (should require jailbreak) – download at http://www.mcleaner.com/
Panda Firewall (require jailbreak)
Disclaimer: Jailbreaking iPhone may void warranty and may brick your phone
Categories: Uncategorized Tags: Apps, Privacy
Android app recommendation 2 – Locale
Phone modes isn’t quite covered by an Android handset – sure you can set to flight mode to disable all connections, but apart from that, other modes are not easy to come by, so a third-party app is necessary to make Conference Mode, Work Mode and Outside mode etc…
With Locale, a free Android app found on the Market, we can set up different situations with appropriate settings, take our example below, we set the ringtone into silent during sleep hours, disable wi-fi when battery is low, and change ringtone from pop-songs to generic rings.
We can set different criteria on each situation according to one or a combination of the five settings:
Battery – triggers at below or above certain % of battery, or depends on if the handset is charging
Calendar – triggers when you have certain event in your Google Calendar
Contact – triggers when specific person of your contact list called, mute them,
Location – detects your location, draw pins on map, triggers if you are in the range
Time – triggers in a specific time of day and/or day(s) of week
When the criteria is met, we can change the certain settings:
Display – Changes the brightness and time-out of idle screen
Network – Switches Bluetooth and wi-fi on or off
Notification – Notifies you that the mode has changed
Ringtone – Changes the default ring-tone
Volume – Changes the volume of ringtone and notifications
Wallpaper – Changes your wallpaper
Android Market Keyword – Locale
Official Site: http://www.twofortyfouram.com/
Categories: Uncategorized Tags: Android, Apps
Android app recommendation (1) – NetCounter
We have received the HTC Hero from Germany (computeruniverse.net) and have been loving the machine. In addition to the very people-centric interface of HTC Hero, of course we install more apps from Android Market for maximize fun. From today on, we will introduce to you some free apps we use and worth recommending to users of any Android phone, Google G1, HTC Magic, HTC Hero, Samsung Galaxy etc.
We take the Network Traffic Counter as our first post in the series. This freeware is capable of keeping track of the actual data usage of the phone, which makes NetCounter a must if you have limited data usage.
Apps Market Keyword: NetCounter
Picture 1: Breakdown of usage of today, 7 days, and monthly. Tapping any stats will show the Received and Sent data.
Picture 2: Menu -> Export to csv will make a detailed .csv delimited usage file in your SD card. (csv files can be opened with text editors like Notepad or spreadsheet program like Excel, you can even view csv file in your browser.)
Categories: Uncategorized Tags: Android, Apps
iPhone IM Apps: eBuddy vs fring vs Palringo
Today we are going to compare the three popular iPhone Instant Messenging (IM) apps – eBuddy, fring and Palringo. As of today (16 July 2009), the three software are free to download and use. Each of these programs support MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, Facebook and AIM.
To start with, Palringo, due to unknown problems, had never worked on the two iPod Touch in our lab. It quits when we press on the software button. Their official site says they support iPod Touch, and we don’t know why.
fring has an advantage of in-software Skype SkypeOut calls (and of course you have to pay to use the SkypeOut function). Its fatal problem is that even if you delete/block someone in your contact list in MSN (or other IM), it still shows up in fring no matter how you set the options. This is extremely annoying if you accidentally added some unwelcomed “friends”.
- Voice support and direct SkypeOut calls possible
- Skype support
- no flexibility in contact list
- Fring spam is on by default – your buddys will see annoying ads. Make sure you turn it off first.
- Advertisement pops out in an user unfriendly way
- Does not allow users to add friends with a period in the first half of email address
eBuddy is famous for being one of the earliest provider of browsed-based IM software.
- Unlike fring, you can do pretty much with your contact list, including deleting 
and renaming.
- With the iPhone OS 3.0 update, It also offers continous PUSH support for a customizable period of time (0, 5, 10 or 30 minutes) after user logs out and quit the program.
- It does not support Skype – and it does not support voice chat at all.
- AutoCorrect is disabled by default (but can turn on)
- No advertisement so far
In short, if we need Skype with MSN/Facebook/GTalk on at the same time, go fring. If we don’t need Skype, eBuddy for sure. And we are using eBuddy.
Categories: Uncategorized Tags: Apps, iPhone, iPod