A must have for businessmen, students and bloggers My Currency coverter

My Currency is a currency converter with 180+ currencies and up-to-date exchange rates. It is your perfect companion on the road. It is very good for businessmen, students and us bloggers to check out our earnings with foreign advertisers in a tap.

For more features and a home screen widget checkout the full version My Currency. It cost only 99 cents :-)
► all active currencies (ISO 4127) 
► Old European currencies 
► Virtual currencies (Bitcoin, Facebook Credit, Linden Dollar) 
► Currency charts 
► automatic updates 
► easy-to-use user interface 
► much much more

The App is free for download from Google Play.  You can also go in for a Pro version which costs Rs.59.00 ($0.99)   Please post your views on the App.

Vijay Prabhu

Action Launcher Pro, now transform your Android home screen

There are many launchers for Android available on Google Play like Apex Launcher (a current hot favourite), Next Launcher, Nova Launcher etc. but Action Launcher Pro comes with a punch.  Most of the above said launchers come with similar features and functions.  Therefore Action Launcher Pro is a very good must have launcher for Android users.



The Action Launcher is published by Chris Lacy.  One of the most beautiful things it does is to do away with themes and animations(which are ugly anyway).  The Action Launcher is built to do what it does best. LAUNCH  The three main focal points of Action Launcher fall in the quick search bar, quick drawer and folders.

The quick search bar is essentially the Google search bar with extra power up. While the Google search bar allows users to search for things like apps and contacts, the quick search bar on Action Launcher gives 10 percent more results and relevant results.  Another thing with Action Launcher is that you don't require the Google Now every now and then to look for things you want.  You can access information by simply taping the search bar and typing in your needs.  The default result is Google Now but Action Launcher allows you to access to apps, contacts and shortcuts which are in a scroll list.   It also includes other default shortcuts, like a voice search icon, quick access to the Play Store, a quick drawer button and a menu key. Recent apps will also appear in the quick search bar before you type anything in the box.

The next one is quick drawer.  It is accessible by tapping the icon in the quick search bar or pressing the home button from the home screen or better still, swipe from left to right in your display and the Quick drawer will be show you  a vertical alphabetized list of all your apps. With it you can easily touch a letter on the side of the list to skip to that letter, which is incredibly fast. It makes the default app drawer on Android 4.2 feel clunky and slow. It doesn’t feature immediate access to widgets, but those are available by either choosing “customize” in the main menu, or long pressing on any home screen.

The last feature is the new folders and covers,   Action Launcher allows you to not only create folders, but use a specific app as a cover icon that allows you to access that app, without opening the folder.  All in all a very useful and powerful App.


The Action Launcher is currently priced at $1.99(Rs.110.00) as a launch discount, so go get it now from Google Play or from the QR code below

Checkout the video before downloading.

If you like to check out other launchers, please visit Apex launcher and Buzz launcher by clicking on the link.

Vijay Prabhu

Comic Books lovers are in for a treat on iOS devices

Good news for all the comic books lovers in the world, Marvel has unveiled a App for iOS devices called Marvel Unlimited.  This App will offer you unlimited comic books from the vast library of Marvel Comics.   However it comes at a steep price of $9.99 per month(Rs.550.00) or $119.88 per year(Rs.6600.00).  

But diehard comic book fans wont mind paying the amount because of the unlimited comic books available.  There is no free trial version but the App has free comic books available for reading (not downloading) so please check it out.

Download the App here from Apple Store.

Please post your comments.

Wireless charging and Qi, understanding the technical lingo

With every new smart phone having a feature called wireless charging, readers(me included) wonder what the wireless charging is and how it works.  The web is filled with technical terms for wireless charging but I found no page explaining it in a simple layman language.  I just wanted to know what wireless charging is and how is it supposed to work on Nokia Lumia 920.

Wikipedia gives the definition of wireless charging as Inductive Charging based on inductive coupling.  This means that the two leads, the battery and the source are coupled through a electromagnetic field to generate electricity, which charges the battery.    They are based on the theory of electrical flux.  The base station and the battery complete a cycle of the flux through coupling and in the process generating electrical current which is then stored by the battery.

The Nokia, Samsung, Sony, LG and other companies use the technology of wireless charging called Qi (pronounced as chee).  The maximum distance in this type of charging is 40 mm but further the distance the less efficient the charging is.  Which means that your mobile has to be very near(sticking) to the base station.  

While the advantage of wireless charging technology are many like there is no risk of electrical shock due to short circuit.  There is also no risk of exposing the phone leads to water in the surrounding like humidity and condensation as the connections are closed.  And no cables.

However that said, the disadvantages are also many.  In the long run you have to place your phone on the base charger or near it like your regular charging. Further you can at least send a message during regular charging, but on wireless mode it is difficult to even send a message or move the phone. The process of wireless charging is very slow, it may take hours for a full recharge.  There is huge wastage of heat, which environmentalist and nature lovers may not like.   The base station is very expensive where as our normal charges are available at pretty cheap prices.  

The biggest disadvantage today is the lack of uniformity in the process like some standardisation seen in the USB, Bluetooth, NFC technology seen. 

Having said that, a whole host of manufacturers, labs and researchers are behind this project.  So maybe in five years from now this may be a standard product.  But as of today it is a failure due to its very improbable needs.

Hope this answers your question.  However look at the video of the wireless charging with Nokia Lumia 920 to understand what the manufacturer is saying about the technology.

Please post your comments regarding this article.

Vijay Prabhu

Youtube Sunday Punch Videos

I and my friend Mr.Vijay Deepak Chhibber are shooting a series of short films based on the day jobs undertaken by various people to subsist their lives.

It is basically a study of the human devotion to work and earn rather than beg.  We are putting out a video every Sunday under the title Sunday Punch : Arty Hands.

Sunday Punch because they are released by us on Sundays and Arty Hands because if you watch the video you will notice that these people are earning a living because of their creative hands.

You can watch the videos here on youtube.  I have since upload 5 short films based on a road side tea shack, a road side sweet lime juice shack, a flour mill, a worker of the flour mill chipping the stone and last but not the least the very famous street side 'Haircut' of Mumbai

Kindly subscribe to my channel and encourage me by posting comments on the videos.  

Do visit youtube.com/indianfilmbar and have fun.

Vijay Prabhy

File App for iOS, a very useful App to manage your files

How many times have you fidgeted with a file you wanted urgently on your iPhone or iPad but couldn't access it due to lack of a good file manager.  Only Instagram allows you access your photos in the phone or in the cloud as and when required.  But the same can't be said of other files like PDF or mp3 etc.  That's where the File App comes in.  This App is a very useful file manager for your iOS and is priced at $0.99(Rs.55.00)

The file management on your iPhone or iPad is very poor except for a few type of files.  JPEGs for one are managed well by native photo App as well as Instagram.  But if you quickly want to access a PDF document from your Mac, iOS fails badly.  You have to save it with Photostream or use Dropbox.

File App is very good at managing files.  Once you have installed the App, you can start importing the files using the + icon in the left hand corner at the top.  Files from your  Dropbox, Google Drive, Box can be accessed instantly and download to the phone with just a tap.


Once all of your files are in the app, the viewing experience is very functional but not particularly original. Files can be grouped together in various folders simply by long pressing on a thumbnail and dragging it to the appropriate location. It’s the same gesture used to create icon folders on the iOS home screen.

The JPEGs load with a black background, although if you tap the screen it’s possible to see the full set of images queued in the gallery.  Music files are played using the App's audio player,  Viewing PDF files is very easy on the App.

The App is little bad on two counts, it has limited file sharing ability and it is not free.  Too bad that a good App like this one will fall prey to bad strategic decision on part of the publisher.  

However it has its own uses.  Download it here from Apple Store.

Vijay Prabhu

Free calls from your Android Device and encrypted too

Another App called Spore from Mycelial Communications that lets you make free calls from your Android device.  This one is better than Skype or Viber for it encrypts your calls eliminating any danger of tapping or otherwise.

There are two free calls clients available as of now on Android, one is Skype and other is Viber.  Spore is a new addition to this free calls family which give you access to the company's OSTN.  The netwrok allows you make calls over IP(VoIP) just like Skype and Viber but main benefit of making calls on Spore is that your communication is encrypted.  This makes it impossible for others to gain access to your calls.

Another advantage of Spore  App is that it is open source.  Spore uses the Zimmerman Realtime Transport Protocol (ZRTP) to access OSTN. The protocol uses a very specific method of exchanging cryptographic keys, dubbed the Diffie-Hellman key exchange. The keys are then used to establish a shared secret key over an insecure communications channel. The keys are exchanged between the phones without going to the server, so if the exchange is successful, the call is not accessible even to Mycelial.

Calling from the App is a bit tricky at first but once you get the hang of it, it runs like a breeze on Android.  On connecting a call, you get a four letter code that you can verify with the caller and confirm that the connection has been encrypted.  There is however a slight lag on wi-fi and 3G networks and more noticeable on EDGE and GPRS.  However this is expected as the Spore is in beta stage now.  

Mycelial has done another interesting thing, it has put the App on Google Play but asks for Rs.109.17 ($1.99) as donation for downloading the App but the same is available on its site for free.  The site has instruction on how to set up the App which hardly takes two minutes of your time.

This one must have App for Android users.  Download the App for free from the company's website here or else download it from Google Play for $1.99(Rs.109.17).

Please post your com