QR Barcode Scanner

For anybody out there who owns a smartphone, a really cool app to download is a QR Barcode scanner. A QR Barcode scanner app will allow you to scan (by using your smartphone's camera) any 1D and 2D barcode. These codes could be anywhere and can contain various information including coupons on the internet, contact information that can be stored on your phone, or a link to an important text, or event. And of course you can scan barcodes when shopping (which is how I use mine most of the time). Something like this comes in handy for the person who is tech savvy and is always on the go. This is a way to keep pertinent information and share it with multiple people quickly, or for the person who never has time to manually input things into their phone (because lets face it we store EVERYTHING on our phones nowadays). This feature even came in handy in my previous post when I went to the movies. The movie theater attendant was able to scan the barcode on my phone for my movie tickets, and I was ready to go. When you get a chance, go to your phones App Store or Market and type "barcode" in the search. There are many different apps that will allow you to scan either type of barcode. By the way, the barcode displayed in this post is my personal barcode. Try scanning this code to have access to me and more of my views. Try scanning all kinds of codes and see what comes up!

Enjoy

Fandango Mobile Movie Ticket

I had been telling my boyfriend that I wanted to go to the movies for about a week now. We finally decided we wanted to go see Columbiana (which was a good movie). We decided to go kinda late, and we were cutting it close getting there on time because we were not close to the theater we wanted to go to. We were trying to figure out what the easiest way to handle this situation was because it was late on a Friday night, and we thought we may have to wait in a long line. I asked my boyfriend if he had a Fandango account so we could just order the tickets from his iPhone app. He advised he did, but didn't know how we were gonna print them out because the kiosk they normally have at the movie theaters almost NEVER works. He noticed that when he looked up the movie and theater, there was an option that said "Mobile Ticket Available". I asked him to read what it was since I had never heard of it before and I was driving (had to stay safe...lol). He explained that you can purchase your tickets like you would normally do with a credit/debit card. But instead of printing it out, your confirmation would be in the form of a barcode that the ticket person could scan. I was so excited because we could literally bypass that long line for the box office and have our phone scanned and enjoy the movie in a timely fashion.

For those of you who aren't self conscious of putting your credit/debit card on file and have a smartphone, download the Fandango app if you don't already have it and try it the next time you go to the movies. The cool part about this feature is that it will tell you which movie theaters offer this service because not all of them do. That way you don't have to worry about paying for tickets and receiving a barcode to a place that doesn't offer it. I'm sure that when you use it, it will make your movie experience go that much smoother. If there are any people out there who have already tried it, I would love to hear your feedback.

Enjoy

4G Phones

For those of you who have been following my blog, you guys know that I am OBSESSED with cell phones. Recently I came over to the dark side (aka I got and iPhone) and I absolutely LOVE IT! From time to time I wonder about the new phones that come out and how they stack up to my iPhone feature wise. Plus I have yet to experience 4G in all it's splendor so I am excited to see how it measures up to the hype. Below is what I experienced with the phones I came across.

Verizon 4G phones were interesting. The Droid Bionic has a HORRIBLE front facing camera. The front facing camera is VGA quality which doesn't even equate to a 1MP camera. Pictures came out very grainy. And for those who take pics of themselves and post to any social site like I do (don't judge me...lol), it didn't look very appealing. The Bionic is the only phone that lets you edit videos which is a cool feature. It doesn't have a vertical menu which is the new thing, but one can download a launcher to do that for you. The LG Revolution is by far the most generic of the 4g phones. Wasn't really appealing or flashy. The only thing nice about the Droid Charge is the screen clarity. Other than that not much to write home about. Looks and feels more like a toy than anything else. Moving on to the AT&T phones, the HTC Inspire is cool, but doesn't have a front facing camera. If I'm gonna have a phone that does all that this phone does, it doesn't make sense not to have one. The LG Thrill was definitely interesting because it is AT&T's first 3D phone. It was certainly fun to play with, but after 5 minutes on that thing, the headache started setting in. It was amazingly fast though. The Motorola Atrix is extremely cool in terms of the featured, and the sound quality on calls were really good. Let's not forget the phone has enough memory to be used as a laptop. Not something I would need, but still cool nonetheless for people who don't want to carry around a bunch of electronics. Last but not least we get to the T-Mobile phones. By far the best phone they have is the HTC Sensation. This phone is pretty much the best at everything it does. The camera is amazing, the front facing camera is crystal clear, the sound quality is good. The HTC UI is very interactive. For all the social media whores out there, friend stream is cool. If your not partial to it, there are MANY apps that can be downloaded that work just as well (I'm partial to Tweetdeck). The phone had a little lag time when I first started using it, but once I went to the first website, it was smooth sailing from there. All in all this phone was CLOSEST to my iPhone feature wise for everything I would use just in Android. Were any of these phones enough to sway be back to Android?? NO! But if I had to go back, the Sensation would be my best bet. Now if we can get this iPhone 5 rolled out, the sky is the limit!