01. Human Japanese

Learn Japanese for under $10
Human Japanese is the most expensive app I’ve ever purchased and it is worth every single penny. The interface is absolutely gorgeous and very intuitive. The lessons are easy to understand and are interactive with audio and quizzes. Although, it is a little bit unnecessarily wordy. 9.99 USD might sound expensive for an app but think about it this way: can you buy a kick-ass beginners Japanese language textbook for 9.99 USD? Nope, didn’t so.

Excerpt from the Hiragana chapter

Vocab Quiz

02. Akinator

Impress your friends with your own genie
Akinator is a mystical genie who can guess who you’re thinking about just by asking a few questions. There’s a free web version at akinator.com so I’m not sure if I would pay USD 1.99 to upgrade from the lite version, which gives users 5 tries. Nevertheless, a very cool app to kill time and impress your friends with.

Question asking stage on the Akinator

Search result on the Akinator

If you manage to defeat the Akinator with an impossible-to-guess character, this is what the genie looks like. (In case you’re wondering, I was thinking about 藤田 玲司 Fujita Reiji, the protagonist from an obscure seinen anime called Gallery Fake.)

03. Instafetch

Every commuter’s best friend
I take the subway to work and back everyday. Unfortunately, the data connection on my subway line is fairly slow. So Instafetch has been very useful. I just save articles that are usually too long to read during my work breaks to Instapaper.com. Instafetch will then sync with Instapaper and download the article content. While the app’s got a fairly basic UI, the text is presented in a very readable serif font a la the New York Times app.

Instafetch Dashboard

Downloaded Article from Instafetch

04. Foodspotting

Foursquare for foodies
This app detects your location and shows you food and beverages that other users have recommended in the vicinity. I’m usually not a fan of location-based apps (because I have my doubts on check-ins) but this is actually pretty nifty. Pity the app is still fairly bare bone and has some stability issues. Nevertheless, there’s tremendous potential for this app to flourish — especially in a country full of mad foodies like Singapore.

05. Package Buddy

Obsessively track your online shopping hauls
While the enigma of not knowing when your package will arrive is exciting for some, control freaks like me prefer to know exactly where the fruits of my online shopping spree has been and when it’ll arrive. This app saves me a lot obsessive refreshing on the unfortunate courier’s website. Package Buddy can be set to auto update and notify you on your packages’ latest whereabouts.

Well, I hope you found some interesting apps in this entry. I know I’m terrible at keeping my blog updated, but I do hope to make this a series of entries.

So please do share your favorite apps in the comments!

If you’re an app developer, feel free to email me with your product details. It I think it’s great, I’ll be sure to give it the coverage it deserves!

Related posts:

1. Taking Screenshots on the Android-powered Nexus S
2. Which Part of the World Should I Live In?
3. Chinese Condoms and Favorite Animal

Now before you roll your eyes and call me a tech idiot, let me explain. Screenshotting on an Android device is not an easy feat for the average consumer — unlike the iPhone. You need to download the Android software development kit, fiddle with your computer’s and phone’s settings to get it to work. It’s even more challenging on Windows XP, since there are additional tools and drivers.

Anyway, all this hard work is for my upcoming entry on my favorite Android apps, which you can expect early next week.

This entry is just for me to bask in my new-found level of geekdom. To celebrate, you are now forced entitled to check out screenshots of my homescreens below.

For those who want to rival my geekiness, here are the sites I referred to:

• How to take screenshots of your Android based phone from Windows
• What Is ADB And How To Install It With Android SDK
• Google USB Driver

Happy geeking out!

Before you design lovers ask, my wallpaper is an illustration from Japanese fashion designer, Tsumori Chisato.

Related posts:

1. Hello Google Nexus S!
2. I got my hands on a Nexus One!

Motorola StarTAC

My very first phone was a hand-me-down from my dad. It was 1998 and I was 12 at the time. Before you accuse me of being a spoiled kid, it was really a necessity rather than a luxury. I had just moved to a civil war-torn Indonesia then. The remnants of the violence was still very much visible, and the danger of another uprising was always looming. Hotel windows were broken, rows upon rows of shops were defaced and fear was still the prevalent in city. So my dad gave me his phone as a safety measure.

Ericsson T10

As the turmoil of the times slowly receded and peace finally prevailed again, I began to see cellphone as a cool accessory rather than a lifeline. I was flipping through my favorite magazine at that time, the now defunct Smash Hits, I came across the coolest ad a 13 year old had ever seen. A white page with multicolored phones lined up one after another. It was too cool and Santa sent me one in turquoise.

Nokia 8210

Then clamshell phones became soo yesterday. Nokia candybars became the in thing. And you could buy all these different covers to match your phone to your clothes.
At that time, I didn’t have to wear uniform to school so changing covers was sure hand.
I remember having a ton of covers from Nokia originals to the rip off ones…until I was robbed one day when I was back in Malaysia. And lost my phones along with my Oakleys. Devastation befell…

Nokia 8310

…but not for long! By then I had moved to Singapore, the land of amazing gadgetry for low, low price. I got the upgraded model the 8310 which I remember loving very dearly since it was so cute and tiny!

Nokia 7210

But then suddenly phones had color screens! I mean “snake” with color screens would be infinitely more fun than black pixeled “snake”! So I had to jump on the color bandwagon too!

Motorola V600

After the streak of Nokias, I finally switched to Motorola because it was one of the few early quad band phones with that amazing Bluetooth technology that allowed you to have a wireless earpiece. It even had a camera! I was moving over to Canada then and I needed a quad band phone so I could use it in North American and Asia without having to perpetually switch between two phones. So this was an investment. It still is the most expensive phone I ever owned to date. It lasted me two good years before the screen finally gave way.

Nokia 6131

But by then I really couldn’t care much about phones anymore. Canadians don’t really have craze for gadgetry like Asians do. No one texted me. They called. So all I needed was something I could receive and make calls with. Hence came a very simple Nokia 6131, which too lasted me two years.

And of course now I work for a telco. Phones have become more like business and less of a cool item. So I have two now, which most of you have probably seen. Nothing spectacular. The HTC S630 for my personal line, the LG Viewty KU990R for work.

As for my upcoming phone, I’m impatiently waiting for the Palm Pre. I’ve fallen madly in love with QWERTY phones and there aren’t many out there to choose from (Blackberries aside). We’ll see what Engadget and CNET say about the Pre when it’s released. If it falls short, I guess I would have to settle for the HTC Dream or a Nokia E71.

And on a not-too-unrelated note, here’s a hilarious video on Cell Phone Reunion.

So dear readers, what phones did you own? Any models you particularly adored? What about phones you’re on the lookout for? And OMG, do you remember SNAKE?

Related posts:

1. Review: LG Viewty KU990R

A new theme at Nanyate?! will always be accompanied with some awesome new plugins. So here are the chosen ones.

1. @Reply with Comment Preview Plugin

Since I wanted to keep this design clean, I have reluctantly removed WordPress Thread Comments and WP Paged Comments. It is now replaced with a Twitter-esque comment system, where you place @name to reply to comments. This plugin allows you to display the comment you’re replying to when you hover the @name. To use it on Nanyate?!, click on “respond to this comment” in the comment box you want to reply to. The HTML code that displays the @name will then be transposed in the comment text area.

I personally don’t think that this plugin’s potential is fully maximized, since it is not very friendly to those who have no knowledge of HTML. I would much prefer to see something like [@name] than a line of HTML code. (Plugin author Marcus Himmel, you hear me?) Also, the CSS and the XHTML are neither easily accessible nor valid for those who those customizing Web Standards Nazis. With all that said, it’s still an innovative plugin that might catch on in the near future – provided that it is improved upon.

2. WordPress Mobile Plugin

With the advent of iPhone, HTC Dream and other mainstream internet browsing-centric phones, I think mobile web surfing will be the next big thing in the very near future, and likely the norm 2 – 3 years. So, it’s best to start catering to them now!

This plugin turns your site design into a mobile-friendly one, when it detects a reader is browsing from his or her phone. The CSS is fully customizable. In return, the author requests you put a small Google Mobile or Admob ad, and demands a small share of the revenue. Alternatively, you can pay the author 25 Euros to remove all advertising.

There are alternatives out there, but most of them route to another URL and place ads on them. Until a fully free mobile plugin is released, I think this plugin is a pretty good deal.

3. Author Highlight Comments (not a plugin)

I wanted better control of my comment highlights, so I dug out a couple links from my rusting favorites folder “design resource”, and lookey what I found: Matt Cutt’s Highlight Author Comments

It’s better than the plugin Highlight Author Comments, which does not allow for flexible CSS-styling. And better than most other tutorials that determines the author based on email, which would clearly be very vulnerable to impersonations. Matt Cutt’s tutorial bypasses all that by using the WordPress admin ID to determine the author. So unless the impersonator-to-be knows your password, you’re pretty safe.

Embarassing story: it took me a few hours to get this code working because I am PHP-stupid, and got so overwhelmed by the new code that I was completely oblivious to the error in my CSS. Long and boring story. Basically, it was my CSS that caused the problem, not the PHP.

Anyway, if you’re as PHP-stupid as I am, or afraid of tweaking your comments.php, please read this excellent step-by-step guide by Colin King; just don’t follow the author highlight tutorial given. Alternatively, feel free to ask this PHP-stupid web enthusiast, if you run into any trouble. Just leave me a comment or send me an e-mail.

Hope you found this WordPress plugins review useful!

Thank You, Commenters!

Lastly, I’d like to thank those provided feedback to my layout. Theme Torii is now in Beta release. I’ve made the header marginally smaller, and changed the footer. Theme Torii now works on the following browsers: Firefox 3, Opera, Internet Explorer 6 + 7, Safari and Google Chrome.

Related posts:

1. New WordPress Plugins!
2. New Theme Finalized, New Plugins & Code
3. Problematic WordPress Upgrade