Save money while shopping for iPhone apps

Apple iPhone App Store has more than 25,000 apps. Hundreds of apps get released, updated or change their pricing every single day. How do you find the app that you are looking for and get it for less ? You obviously don’t want to buy an app for full price and discover that it is available for free the next day.

If you want to keep track of the latest changes on the app store and be updated when your favorite apps get updated or the price gets revised, you have the following options :

On the web : Use a web-application called ‘AppShopper’. AppShopper tracks all changes happening on the App Store for you and you can see the changes on their website or subscribe to them in RSS format. The cool thing here is that you can subscribe or search to see what interests you. You can either see all new apps or updates or price changes and you can even filter these events by free and paid apps. You can even subscribe to see the changes happening to that very special app you like.

Many apps drop their price periodically to boost the sales or promote their other apps or to get good reviews from new users. You can save cash by buying these apps on those days by subscribing to app price changes on this website.

On the iPhone : Download and use free applications like ‘BargainBin’ or ‘PandoraBox’. You can think of these apps as the app version of AppShopper website. You can see the latest apps, updates and those with price changes. You can just look for those apps that became free for few days or even get alerted when a specific app drops price.

I have saved more than $20 by using these apps to buy some of the iPhone apps I have on my iPhone. Sometimes I download an app for free when the price drops and delete it if I think it needs improvement. When the app gets an update and becomes useable, you can download it again for free even though it is not free now as you have already purchased it and all updates are free.

Share your position using iPhone GPS

If you ever wanted to share your current location with your loved ones when you are on a road trip alone, this information is for you. There are times when I go on road trips alone and my wife gets worried if I don’t call her frequently to let her know where and how I am. I usually don’t like to talk on phone while driving and yet want to share my current location with selected people. That’s when I found InstaMapper and their ‘GPS Tracker’ iPhone app.

To use this service, sign-up for a free account on their website and download the free application for iPhone. You have to enter you device id to map your web account to your iPhone app. When you are going on a trip and want to share your location, start this application and leave it running. That’s it. It will automatically transmit your current location which can be viewed online on a Google map. You can configure the accuracy you want and the time interval.

As applications can’t run in background on iPhone, you have to keep this app in the foreground to keep it running. If you are worried about your iPhone going to sleep, simply start you iPod app, start playing some music and then start the GPS tracker app. If you have got iPod app playing music in the background, this app keeps sending your location even if your iPhone goes to sleep.

Privacy is a big concern when you are thinking of sharing your location online. Your location is never public and you can share your location to only select people by sending a link to them. Of course you can share your location with everyone if you want to by embedding a map in your website, blog or facebook profile. The best thing about iPhone app is that it can’t run in the background and hence you don’t have to fear that you will forget to turn it off and hence share your location unintentionally. Your location is transmitted only if the app is in the foreground.

The application is not limited to iPhone. They have an application for Blackberry and Android phones too.

Live Cricket Scores and News On iPhone

If you love Cricket and iPhone, Cricinfo Mobicast app for iPhone is for you. Mobicast is a FREE app from Cricinfo.com through which you can get live cricket scores and ball by ball commentary updates right on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

This app updates the score automatically and saves you the pain of clicking refresh button to fetch latest score. It includes stunning game time visuals from Getty images and the latest news from Cricinfo.com. Home screen of the app provides the list of ongoing and upcoming matches. You can click on an ongoing match to get the ball by ball commentary and score updates. Also included are several audio podcast features from experts such as Ian Chappell, Tony Greig and Geoff Boycott.

Mobicast for iPhone is a must-have for a cricket fan.

Sunnyvale Hindu Temples – Festival Times and Event Calendars

If you are a resident of Sunnyvale or live near by and are interested in finding out the timings, festival information, event calendars of all Hindu temples in the neighborhood, below are few links that you might want to bookmark.

Sunnyvale Hindu Temple and Community Center’s website has list of daily activities like abhishekam and aarti timings, special events list and list of festivals.

Shiva-Vishnu Temple and Hindu Community / Cultural Center, Livermore, through its website, provides the latest calendar that contains thithi & nakshatram for every day, events at the temple and all major festivals.

Sanatan Dharma Kendra has a website with temple timings, daily schedule, upcoming events, weekend activities and hindu calendar.

Shirdi Sai Parivaar has details about Sunnyvale Sai Temple timings and aarti timings.

Closing Citibank India Accounts

I have a Citibank Suvidha account and a credit card account in India and wanted to close them as they are not being used for the past 2 years due to my stay in USA. I have contacted Citibank customer service and received a response that I have to send them a written letter requesting closure of the two accounts.

Closing of the accounts can’t be done online or over the phone, I was told. I can login to my online account and do whatever I want to, other than asking for the closure. Same goes with phone calls. They say that it is for security reasons. If I can login to my account and transfer money then isn’t that a good enough way to request for closing my account ? Why do you need this “extra safety” only when you want to close the account ?

I think that all this is just a trick to stop people from closing the accounts. Who will have the time and patience to type, sign and send a letter through post to Citibank to close the accounts ?

Ultimate unit conversion app for iPhone – a2z Pro

There are many unit conversion utility apps available on the app store. But there is one to rule them all – a2z Pro.

So, what’s so different about this app that it stands out from the rest ? The standard conversion utility apps give you a list of units you can choose from. When you quickly need to convert units, you'd just have to be lucky that the software you have supports that unit! a2z Pro developers gave some thought to this problem and designed the whole application to make the user more in control.

a2z Pro allows you to create your own categories for units that are not already included in the application. Once you have created a new category with units and their relevant conversion formulas, you can upload it to their server to share with everyone. When you upload your own category to the server, your fellow a2z Pro users can browse the online catalog of categories and download it if they think it is of use to them.

You don’t have to leave the application to create a new category or to browse what other people have created. It is very simple and elegant. Make no mistake, there are those default conversion categories provided by the app. You can browse and download new categories created by users like you only if you need to. One more very useful feature is that you can try the new categories before you download. Download a category only if you like how it works.

This simple idea of allowing the users to create and share their conversion categories takes the app to a whole new level and improves the usability manifold. For example, the standard conversion categories that come doesn’t contain ‘Cooking Measures’ to help convert cooking units. I just went into their category download page, tried the available category supplied by a user and added it to my categories. You can see the download count for all categories to see how many people downloaded that category and try it before you download it.

I liked the extensibility of this app and it is now a permanent member of my favorite app list.

Send some money to India

If you have not checked the Dollar to Rupee conversion rates for more than a week, you will be surprised to know that the exchange rate is at an all-time high. Check this graph to see for yourself how much Dollar has gained against Rupee.

What is the smart thing to do at this point ? Send some money to India if you have been thinking of doing so. You will get very good conversion rates now.