Swiftkey - how did I ever live without it

Many of us have typical phrases that we always use and whether we admit it or not, we are pretty predictable when it comes to our emails and test messages. One of the most amazing apps to recognise this is Swiftkey which many people have mentioned before but I only recently started using it. The app has the ability to scan your email account and your text messages to understand what phrases you like to use and then use that information to tailor its word predictions as you type on your phone. 

As a result of using Swiftkey, I've managed to take notes almost as fast as people are talking. It used to be that it was faster for me to take notes with a pen but now it seems that the fastest way to get things down is actually not even a keyboard on the computer but using swiftkey on my phone. Boy, is technology changing us or what? You can download a trial of the Swiftkey app on Google Play and see what you think of it. I held out for quite a while and eventually when I bought it, it was the most well spent $2.99 in a long time. 

Telstra Pre-Paid for 50% off Google Play apps

Telstra has recently set up an arrangement for Telstra customers to charge back all purchases from Google Play back to their Telstra account. This may not seem like much of an advantage but the benefit comes from the fact that you can use Telstra prepaid credit to buy apps from the Google Play or Apple stores. Still not getting it? Every week, either Coles, Dick Smith, Australia Post, Big W or Woolworths will offer Telstra $30 prepaid sims for $10 each. The only limitation is that you can only use $20 at a time. This means that you can get apps / movies / music from Apple or Google stores for 50% off whatever their price is in the store.

1. Buy a $30 sim card for $10 that will fit in your phone.
2. Call up Telstra to activate it or activate it online. If you want to use some of the credit for data use, the best way is to call up to activate the sim card for an IPad data plan which gives you 3GB which expires in 30 days.
3. Insert the sim card to your phone and go to the Google Play store.
4. Buy an app and when it comes to the payment screen, there should be a feature for you to buy the app using your Telstra credit. If you are using the prepaid credit, make sure you do charge it back to the prepaid sim and not your home phone bill for example.
5. If you have remaining credit, you will still be able to use the remainder of the balance for data etc.

Vodafone Australia is rolling out 4.1.2

Good news! Just two hours ago, one of the community managers on Vodafone's forums announced that the Galaxy Nexus firmware update has just been finalised by google after what seems to be an eternity. The rollout should start appearing on your phones later this week if this update is to be believed.

TripIt Interrogates Your Email for Travel Confirmations

It's great that we have all these different organisational apps available but the problem is that all of them need you to input data. Some of us want to be organised but don't like the organizing part of it. This is where a little application is changing how you organise your business trips or holidays.

TripIt is an app or widget which sits on your phone telling you when your next flight or hotel booking is scheduled. When you tap the widget, it will then tell you more details about your booking such as the departure and and your confirmation number. Further down the screen you can also see the flight number, booking class, aircraft type, duration of the flight and even the distance you are going to travel. If you are traveling with other people, their names will also be listed there.

So that seems to be quite a lot of information you need to enter, right? Wrong. The app actually accesses your emails to detect flight and hotel bookings as they come in. Then it pulls the information into the app and notify you of the new confirmation imported into your app.

For the pro version, you also get to track your frequent flyer points. I haven't tried the pro version but if you have, let us know what you think.

Jelly Bean 4.1.2 from Samsung Australia

Yep, we're still waiting.

Gestures come to Jelly Bean 4.2

As we continue to wait for Jelly Bean 4.1.2, the next big thing is already coming to other devices.

• Jelly Bean 4.2 Daydream will include swype to the keyboard which allows you to gesture between the letters of a word without lifting a finger. 
• You can also have multiple users for your device which means you can customise your layout for yourself and have a different layout for your wife. 
• Notifications will now allow you to press the notification to action the notification such as opening up navigation to your next appointment or return a missed call. 
• The lock screen will no longer be a redundant screen if you choose because you can now add news or a slideshow to the lock screen. 

I am not sure whether Vodafone Australia will change the software update now to 4.2 because we Galaxy Nexus users didn't get the 4.1 and then they said they will be releasing 4.1.2. 

Jelly Bean 4.1.2 Coming up

In Australia, Vodafone customers like myself are still waiting for the deployment of the Android OS update Jelly Bean and now there is talk in the USA of an even newer Jelly Bean release 4.1.2. The good news is that Vodafone Australia has confirmed that they will be sending out this new Jelly Bean update (4.1.2) to Galaxy Nexus users when they do get around to making it available. In other words, we are skipping the 4.1 stage and going straight on to 4.1.2.

Nothing much seems to have changed with the new 4.1.2 update, except for stability changes.