Archive for October, 2009

Smartphone application keeps you up to date on latest weather conditions

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

Sun or rain? Hot or cold? You can always know the answer, even while you're on the go with Weather Watcher Mobile. Available in flavors that fit your PocketPC or Smartphone, this Windows Mobile app will keep you in the loop, weatherwise.

Drawing on the resources of The Weather Channel, this tool lets you grab current conditions, short- and long-term forecasts, and even severe weather alerts from The National Weather Service. Check out satellite- and radar maps for thousands of locations worldwide as well.

Weather Watcher Mobile is a free application. It runs under Windows Mobile 2003/5/6 and requires version 2 of the .NET Compact Framework.

Make free–but complicated–international calls

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

If you've got friends or family overseas, you know it can cost you a pretty penny to phone them. Even with many of the low cost services available, there are hefty mobile phone surcharges–often more expensive than the actual call itself. C'mon, in this day and age there's got to be some way to beat the system on that, right?

Jaxtr has a service available that lets you make free international calls. You give the service your number and the number of the phone you're calling, and the adventure begins. These folks send an SMS text message to your recipient, giving them a local number–local to them–to call in to. Once they do that, you're automagically connected to them. Since they initiated the call (to the local Jaxtr number) on their end, there's no mobile phone surcharge for you.

This free service is available to you on your landline or cell phone. You don't even have to sign-up, although if you do, there are additional options available to you.