Mark's Stream

Just recently I've switched mobile phone networks and I've had to switch SIMs. Having had an Android phone for the past two years, I've come accustom to the huge number of apps which enhance your mobile experience. An app which I installed a long time ago and had completely forgotten about was 'Prey'.

Prey is a security app which will alert you if your phone is stolen and will help you track it's whereabouts. It not only works for Android and iOS, but Windows, Mac and Linux laptops too. It can be triggered in a number of ways. I had it set up to start tracking and make an insane amount of noise if anyone were to replace the SIM card (exactly what I was attempting to do!)

So, as I put in my new SIM card, the alarm started blaring and a notification came up on the screen to tell the unsuspecting 'thief' that the phone was stolen and is being tracked. An email notification was also sent to me to tell me Prey had been activated and shortly after my first report came in.

The report shows you a pretty accurate map of where you phone is located and shows the IP address the phone can be found on. You can set the reports to collect what data you want and at which intervals you'd like. 

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I'm pretty happy with how it worked. If I were to loose my phone or if it were stolen, I'd be able to trigger the reports through the web interface or via SMS. The phone will send data back to you and it can lock your phone and leave a message to help your phone get back to you.

I'd definitely recommend.

Recently I got myself a new phone, my first ever touch-screen phone. I opted for an Android device for numerous reasons (I wont go into that now) and when I got my phone I was delighted apart from the fact I found typing incredibly difficult. I knew a virtual keyboard would take getting used to but even after a couple of weeks I was still very slow at typing and the error rate just put me off wanting to type at all.

All this changed when I got wind of Swype coming to Android. Swype is specifically designed for on screen text input and actually holds the Guinness World Record for texting. Swype is brilliant because instead of trying to emulate a physical keyboard it takes full advantage of the touch screen and works by dragging your finger across the screen. It then guesses which word you wanted. If found it to be very accurate and even when there is some ambiguity on the input a popup will appear with a choice of possible words. 

For me this has worked out great because the problem with the original keyboard was that you needed to be quite accurate on where you press and my fingers were just too big. Swype seems to work even though sometimes my fingers are nowhere near the letters!

You can see in the picture below with the stock Android keyboard on the left and Swype on the right. Even visually it's a big improvement on the original keyboard.