Here are some highlights of what we discussed at the meetup:

• Google Weather in Mobile Browser (link)
• Upcoming Tablets & devices (iPhone on VZW, Motorola Atrix, Motorola Xoom, Toshiba 10″ tablet, Viewsonic tablets, some dual screen device from Sprint?, HP WebOS tablet on 2/9?)
• My take on productivity with a tablet (conclusion: I can do 90% of what I need to do on one!)
• Speaking of tablets, an attendee (Chad Tindle) brought in his Viewsonic 10″ tablet that he customized with a Froyo ROM, thanks to XDA Developers!  We enjoyed a great demo of the device, which (with Froyo installed), was quite impressive!  Not bad for $279 from the Sears Outlet!
• Where’s my Droid?  If you own an Android phone, you need this! It’s free, and it will help you find your phone in the event you lose it!
  • Note: chatroom also recommended Lookout (for BB, Android and Windows phones), and of course there’s MobileMe for iPhone, and Andy from HTCfanatic reminded us that HTC offers a much more robust option for all HTC devices, including the capability to remote wipe your phone AND your storage card!
• Google Goggles (demo of translating text, solving sudoku puzzle).  My text translation demo failed like a bad Microsoft presentation! Believe me it works (not as well as WordLens on iPhone), but it does work and could be handy! You can see a working demo of the sudoku puzzle being solved in this video clip.  Goggles does a lot more than translating text and solving sudoku - check it out here.  Available for iPhone 4 too!
• Google Translate – it’s been available for iPhone for a while now (2008!), and for Android as well, but now they’re slowly adding “Conversation Mode”, which allows you to speak with someone in real-time and see the results on the screen.  Spanish is currently available, with others to follow.  Andy from HTCfanatic said the troops are using Google Translate in Iraq and Afghanistan!  Awesome.
• Home Pipe no longer free.  We’ve talked about HomePipe before, and it’s pretty handy to easily, remotely access your entire MyDocuments folder of a PC.  Best of all, HomePipe was free.  Well, it’s still free – if you use it 10 times or less in a month.  Otherwise, you’ll need to pay $23.99 for “heavy use”.   Still, not a bad price, considering how handy it is.  You can stream media that is on your PC, which is sweet!
• AudioGalaxy – Speaking of streaming media, this service is also free (I’ll say for now). Audiogalaxy is a cloud music player that puts all your music and playlists at your fingertips from any computer or mobile phone.
• Cloud Print – Back in April 2010 Google announced Google Cloud Print, a service that allows printing from any app on any device, OS or browser without the need to install any software.  Now, they’ve released the beta launch of Google Cloud Print for mobile documents and Gmail for mobile, which is rolling out to users throughout the next few days. 
• Google voice number porting – Number porting is a feature in which your existing mobile number will become your Google Voice number and you can take advantage of the full set of the Google Voice features, like one number to ring all of your phones, online voicemail, and more. Number Porting also costs a one-time fee of $20, payable via Google Checkout. Note that you will still need carrier service (Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc.) to receive calls on your mobile phone.
• Louisville app adds Water Co. feature – While the Water Company is not exactly a thrilling add to the Louisville mobile app, it’s good to see them adding features all the time!  The concensus from the meeting was:  Add Metro Call to the app!  Make it easy to snap a photo and submit a ticket to Metro Call in a breeze! <hint hint!>
• Scanner Radio & NOAA – see my post on the return of the NOAA weather radio feed!  And just in time, considering the snow we just had!
• HDMI output limitations now on the EVO? - It appears that somehow, YouTube and other streaming video cannot be seen via the HDMI-out on the HTC EVO anymore.  This was brought to my attention from a viewer, and in all honesty, I hadn’t noticed because I simply don’t use the HDMI slot.  I gave it a try, and to my surprise, YouTube videos only play audio on my HDTV!  What’s up with that?!
• Carriers will raise rates this year: http://bit.ly/eW4PEb - saw this post on Twitter.  We discussed the impending, inevitable rise in mobile rates in the future, as the masses begin using the hell out of data. 

OTHER UPCOMING MEETINGS:
LouMUG Friday 28th – http://loumug.org/default.aspx
LDA & LVL1 Android app workshop Feb 16 – http://bit.ly/fpfpX9

See you next month at the meetup!

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Tags: meetup, Minutes, Notes

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Posted in Meetup Notes by Matt Coddington No Comments Yet