QR - Android Police - Android News, Apps, Games, Phones, Tablets

Jul

[New App] InstaWiFi Lets You Easily Share Your Wi-Fi Password Through NFC Or QR Codes

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

Last Updated: July 27th, 2012

We all know the scenario: a friend or family member is at your place and needs to connect to the Wi-Fi. At that point, you have a few choices (none of which are ideal): hand them a piece of paper with the network key, tell it to them aloud, or enter it for them.

Wouldn't it be so much easier to let them tap an NFC tag (granted they actually have an NFC-capable phone) or scan a QR code? Dang right it would - and now the process of making that happen in stupid-easy thanks to a new apps called InstaWifi.

Apr

Want To Make A Personalized QR Code With An Embedded Image? Esponce Can Help

Posted by Ryan Whitwam in Tips & Tutorials

QR codes are finally starting to show up around town, but we've all known about them for some time, right? Well if you want to stay ahead of the curve and keep wowing regular people with your mobile expertise, why not start adding images to your QR codes? Esponce is a company that's in the business of selling QR code tracking and marketing, but part of the service is freely available, and you can use it to really spice up your QR codes.

The web tool provided by Esponce relies on the fact that some of the lines in a QR code don't actually contain the information needed to decode it.

Feb

Official RealVNC Viewer For Android Hits The Market - And It Doesn't Come Cheap

Posted by David Ruddock in Applications, News

Ok, so it's not that expensive, but $10 (5.99GBP)? Seems a little pricey for a remote viewer client (though LogMeIn will run you $30, by comparison), especially considering RealVNC's "Personal Edition" desktop software costs 30 bucks. Fear not, because there is a free version of the RealVNC software for Windows, and while it lacks a lot of the nifty features the full Personal Edition has, the Android viewer client doesn't support most of them anyway.

If you want a completely free Android VNC experience, I suggest TightVNC for PC or Chicken of the VNC for OS X, combined with the equally free android-vnc-viewer (though you'll probably spend a little more time configuring them).

Sep

New AndroidPolice.com Feature: Instant QR Magic - Hover On Any Link In Any Post To Get The Corresponding QR Code [+Poll]

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Apps/Games, Off-Topic, Tips & Tutorials

Admit it - QR codes are useful. And cool. They allow you to instantly get any bit of information, most frequently browser or Market urls, onto your phone - all you have to do is download the Barcode Scanner app from the Market (or any other QR reader) and scan the QR image.

Tutorial: Turn any url into a QR code from within your browser in just a few seconds.

But What About Chrome2Phone?

Chrome2Phone (or FoxToPhone) aims to make it even easier to pass information like this around but consider this:

Chrome2Phone functionality is only available on phones running Froyo, which means some phones will never receive it.

Aug

Swiftkey Beta Now Updated To Include Speech-To-Text! Also Includes Various Fixes And Improvements

Posted by Ron Hamelin in Applications, News

All I can say is “YAY—FINALLY!” Can you tell that I am totally psyched about the addition of speech-to-text to Swiftkey?

If you recall, I did a brief review on Swiftkey beta back in mid-July. I have been using this keyboard exclusively since that time and have not looked back. In my humble opinion, it is better than any keyboard, including Swype, that I have tested to date on my Droid Incredible. Yes, it is THAT good. Now, with the addition of speech-to-text, there is very little that I can suggest to make this any better. In fact, if you look at the changelog below, they have improved the overall appearance of the keyboard with clearer lettering and larger keys.

Jul

[App Of The Week] Craigsnotifica by Widget, A Powerful And Customizable Tool For Navigating Craigslist

Posted by David Ruddock in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Introduction

We here at Android Police know how important apps are as a part of the overall Android experience. We also know how notoriously difficult the Android Market is to navigate. With these two things in mind, we decided to introduce the Android Police App Of The Week.

Every week, we'll take one app that we think is a cut above the rest, and give you an in-depth look at what we think makes it exemplary.

Like the idea of Craigslist? Don’t like actually using the website (especially on your phone)? Or like the idea of having a more powerful Craigslist with features such as notifications, favorites, and saved lists of searches?

Jul

2x Tips: A Brilliantly Easy Way To Generate QR Codes In A Split Second... And An Even More Brilliant Way To Do It Even Faster

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Tips & Tutorials

In today's Android-enabled world, QR codes play quite an important role because, face it, who wants to type that long, pesky URL on your phone's keyboard when you can just quickly scan an image and have the URL decoded in a split second?

Why do I say with such confidence that QR codes are now a commodity? Have a look at this awesome chart AppBrain posted yesterday. See Barcode Scanner, whose primary purpose is to scan QR codes? A whopping 63.8% of Android users have it installed on their phones - in fact it's the #3 most installed application.

Every respectable Android site uses QR codes in one way or another - sites like AppBrain offer a QR code on every application page, and when we do app roundups, like this 8 Great Apps Every Rooted Android User Should Know About one, we try to include QR images as well.

May

Google Shwag And Secret Messages Encoded On The Google I/O T-Shirts

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in News

I meant to post this in the morning but ran out of time, so this may be a little old news now. Apologies if you've already seen it.

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Yesterday was day 0 of the Google I/O conference. During this day, presenting developers set up their demo stations, known here as sandboxes, register, check in, and last but not least - receive shwag, also known as "free crap".

This year, the official shwag included: