High Tech Marketing Blog

Got a new Droid phone for Christmas.

It is AMAZING.

Way more than a phone, it’s a powerful tool for many facets of my life. Those of us who have never had an iPhone can finally see what a real smart phone can do.

I’ve been testing and using several apps that I have found quite useful. I’ll share a few of these in blog posts now and in the future as I discover them.

Example: I installed PhoneMyPc. This is a remote access software that allows me to view and control my desktop PC. I can be on a beach and log into my desktop PC, accessing any of the information or resources there. It also has a “live view” mode which I installed on my kid’s PC. With this, I can view what is live on their PC at any time – without them knowing it. Now let me be clear that they all know I have this. In fact, I went to great pains to show it to them. (I believe that they should get used to the fact that others, such as parents and employees, will be viewing and monitoring machines they are using.)

I also have an app that shows me Google Analytics on multiple sites I own.

Another amazing app is called Barcode Scanner. You point the camera lens at a barcode and it reads the barcode, recognized the product, and offers me a choice to do a Google search on it. All within seconds.

The other night I was in a store and saw a new camcorder with a form factor I’m considering. I scanned the barcode, quickly did a Google search and found a digital camera forum with a review on the camera. Turns out – it got slammed by reviewers so I didn’t buy it. All that happened in under two minutes. That’s a really useful asset.
Barcode Scanner also scans business cards and adds them to my contacts. Nice.

The Droid has the ability to share data and sync with my gmail, Google Calendar, Google Voice and Picasa accounts as well. That was particularly helpful with my contacts. I’ve never been really synced between contacts on my phone and Outlook, which I use on my desktop.

But Gmail allowed me to import my Outlook contacts, and then painlessly synced them to my Android. With a little fooling around, I had 600+ contacts on my phone. Most of whom I will probably never call…

I have also moved over to using the Google Calendar because it is also synched and will pop up reminders on my phone of appointments. No more missing consulting calls.

If you use Verizon, I highly recommend the Droid.

Got a favorite app? Leave a comment and let me know. Even if it’s on an iPhone, because many iPhone apps are being ported for Droid.