Jun 11
30
Notes from 06-28-11 MyMobileVille Meetup
Here is a recap of what we discussed at our meetup on June 28, 2011. If I missed something, please contact us and we’ll update the post!
SHOPPING LISTS
- Out Of Milk – we gave away door prize copies of the pro version of this app!
- Mighty Grocery – unfortunately, no door prize copies…
We had some great discussion on the benefits of using a shopping list app that syncs to the cloud, making it easy to access from anywhere, as well as share lists with other folks. Both of the main apps we demoed and discussed had some similar features, and are both recommended as a viable solution. There are others in the market as well (Grocery King, etc), but we just didn’t have time to cover them all!
We also had some discussion about the “dedicated” shopping apps such as the one Target and other stores have. They offer a very robust experience for that particular store, which might be what some folks prefer. It all depends on your specific needs! Me, I am sticking with Out of Milk, as my wife and I are already in a groove working with it together. And if you knew how tough it was to get her to use a digital shopping list, you’d appreciate it even more! 
CLOUD MUSIC
For Cloud Music, or what some are referring to as a “music locker” in the cloud, this is just the beginning. Yes, there have been numerous streaming solutions for quite a while, from Pandora to Slacker Radio and apps on the PC such as Orb, HomePipe and the like, but truly having your entire music library in the cloud is something people are only just now beginning to understand and experience.
- Amazon Cloud Music – Amazon was the first major player to enter the cloud music arena. Lately, Amazon has been doing a lot of very cool things, and this is one of them. Definitely worth checking out – 5GB of storage is free, and if you purchase an entire album, you’re bumped up to 20GB for a year.
- Google Music – Still quite new, by invite only, and the very cool part: up to 20,000 songs may be uploaded for free! That is, free for now – Google is expected to charge for this at some point, but perhaps they are waiting to see how things pan out. The app on the Android device is still pretty basic, and needs some more functionality, but if you get an invite, we highly recommend giving it a try. It’s pretty cool to have your entire library available on any device!
- iCloud – Go to iCloud.com to learn all the details about what Apple is about to unleash on the world, but suffice it to say, it IS going to be a game changer in many ways! Enough said about that!
- Other options (Facebook, Best Buy) – Best Buy just announced a music service as well as Sony, and rumor has it, Facebook is entertaining something too! Everyone wants in the game, because they see it as the next big trend!
- Subsonic – We didn’t dive into this at the meeting, but it was brought up by one of the meetup attendees, and they love it! Check it out! We’re going to!
- Lastly, here is an interesting read: Streaming vs. having a “music locker” in the cloud?
PHOTO CLOUD SYNC
- Dropin (free) – automatically syncs all photos taken to Dropbox. There are some caveats for this app, such as it syncs ALL images on your storage card to Dropbox – including images belonging to apps, etc. Still, it’s a nice, free solution for ensuring your photos are synced up to Dropbox if you have an account. If you don’t have one, you can get one here. 2GB of storage is free!
- Picasa Tool – allows uploading to Picasa albums. Not necessarily auto-syncing (which is what our theme was about), but still handy for managing your Picasa photo albums if you use this service.
- DropSnap – DropSnap is similar to Dropin, but it costs $3.99 (there is a 3-day trial). There is a cool video demo shown on their page in the Market. Check it out!
- SugarSync – This service offers Mobile Photo Backup – precisely what we were discussing here at the meeting. You can see more details about it on their site. We didn’t have time to demo this service, but we highly recommend checking it out as a solution!
- Titanium Media Sync - This app allows you to sync a set of folders from your Android device to the cloud and back. It currently supports the Dropbox storage service, as well as your own FTP, SFTP, FTPS servers. The official Dropbox app isn’t needed.
- LightBox – Personally, this is what I am using right now, and I really like it. Not only does Lightbox auto-sync all my photos to the cloud, there is also a social media element to the service which is really cool! Check it out!
OTHER THINGS WE TOUCHED UPON:
- Google in the mobile browser – if you haven’t utilized some of the Google services on your mobile browser lately, you need to check it out. Google is quietly making the mobile web versions of many services quite robust!
- Google+ We didn’t have much to go on with this, because it was just announced and is currently by invitation only, but it sounds very interesting! Here is an article from TechCrunch which explains it a little more thoroughly. We’ll be discussing this more in the future, I’m sure.
That’s about it! Have some topics you’d like to see discussed at future meetups? Suggest them here!
