Through-out the month of January 2011, Runkeeper are giving away the Pro version of their mobile client (Android and iPhone iOS) for nothing, a saving of $9.99 for each version.

I’ve been using the free version of Runkeeper on my Nexus One for the past 9 months and have been very impressed with the service in comparision to some of the other training trackers on the Market and the Polar based gear that i’ve uses for years before now.  The things that have impressed me the most have been the social networking side of the website, the general look and feel of both the mobile apps/website and the ongoing enhancement of the size; like the recent addition of heartrate monitoring.

Downloading the pro verison now whilst it is free give you access to additional features like:

• Manual activity posts (something that used to only be done via the website) for those times on the gym machines
• Audiable coaching / pace information as you are training
• Custom playlists whilst you exercise

Depending on how far you want to take the usage, Runkeeper also has a yearly ($19.99 USD) subscription service for their Elite functions that provides a greater level of statistical data about your fitness activities and helps to generate taylored training progams to help achieve that next milestone or race event.  Something that I really like the sound of but have yet to try is Runkeeper Live, which allows you to stream live information to their website for people to follow your progress, real-time.
Download your copy from iTunes or the Market now, whilst it’s FREE!

UPDATE 1/Feb/2011: RunKeeper have seen a massive increase in the number of people registering to use their application since it was made free for the month of January.  Despite being listed as one of Apple’s top grossing apps for 2010, the team as decided that from what they have learnt and their future plans, they will continue to provide the Pro version of the RunKeeper mobile app for free.

The house searching site Rightmove have released an app for the iPad that should enhance browsing through new properties for rent and sale in your local area.

Having used the app for the past week or so I can say that it is nice to use but has the feel of being released to the public a little soon. I like the look and feel of the application as you browse through the search results (it feels kind of like a landscape brochure; just without the iBooks page turning feature), and the image quality of the pictures is much higher than that you get on the webpage. However here is where my love for the application ends and what I hope will make it’s way into future releases of the software:

• Login to your online profile
• Access to saved properties
• Access to saved searches
• Display of property floor plans

Whilst this list may not be very long, I think that it is critical to the success of this application. Let’s see what the comes in any updates!

In the mean time, download the Rightmove iPad app free from iTunes and give it a try yourself!

UPDATE (08/Jun/2010): Rightmove have updated their app in the last couple days and while they have not addresses all of my points above, it does look like it is on the product roadmap.  I have high hopes!

I blogged about this a while back and I am pleased to say that Dropbox have completed their private beta testing stage and released their Dropbox for Android application to the masses.

Having installed and given the app a quick try-out this morning everything looks like it is order; I was able to access a PDF file and JPEG image that was already stored in my Dropbox without any issues.  The only thing that I noticed when looking at the image file, the picture was downloaded and saved into my phones Gallery so you need to be aware of SD Card storage space if you are going to do it a lot.  According to the notes, you should also be able to automatically save pictures taken with the phone to your Dropbox account but I have not had this working so far.

Dropbox product brief …

This application allows you to access your Dropbox on the go, search your files, send them to your friends, and even take photos and videos that sync instantly online and across computers!

Android Flexibility
Open the files in your Dropbox using any of the thousands of available applications from the Android Market, view movies and audio with Android’s media player, or edit a document with the built-in text editor. With the Dropbox Android application, all of Android’s many features work seamlessly with the syncing, backup, and sharing power of Dropbox.

Interested in giving Dropbox’s 2GB free service a try, sign-up for an account here

I have been waiting to see this release for a while.  Apple iPhone users have had this tool avaiable for some time as a paid for application but up until now there has been no Android version of the mobile remote control client.

That all changed this week with LogMeIn’s release of the public beta (called Ingition) onto the Android Market as a free download.

So far I have only had a quick tryout of the software on my Nexus One (I have been using the full web client for a long time now).  I can now agree with people that have used it on the iPhone’s screen that the overall resolution is a little restrictive and it did take me a few minutes to work out how to operate the controls.  That being said, it does just, work, and was even usable over GPRS connection speeds!

I’ve had a few network errors when trying to connect to one machine in particular but this is a beta release so I would expect to see the odd hiccup.   Basically it is a nice feature to have in your arsenal when needing to access that one bit of information on your home machine or helping out a friend / family member with their PC (or Mac) issues.

The LogMeIn Ingnition for Android beta is available for people in  US, CA, UK, AU and NZ, download it from the Android Market now.

Reading Engadget this morning, I found that Google pushed out an update to the Google Maps application over night to version 4.1.1.  What is so important about this release?  Well it finally enables the turn-by-turn navigation feature in Google Maps for somewhere outside of North America.

Having only recently purchased a Nexus One phone (they are not yet released in the UK – good old eBay!), I have been getting used to the Market app update available notification message being seen every now and then but there was no such message for this update, and nothing on the Nexus One blog.
At the moment, all I can confirm is that I is avilable for the UK and it does plot routes.  I will be pretending that I do not know my way home this evening and giving it a try.
In the mean time, here is Google’s YouTube video of the application…

I was watching the BBC’s click programme this weekend and they had a news segment in there about phone applications that people may find of interest.  Now I doubt that these apps are anywhere near new (they were talking about Dropbox as if it was a new service) but an application that’s available for both the iPhone and Android platform caught my eye.

The application is called Bump and is used to transfer contact information between 2 devices. As the name suggests the transfer is initiated by ‘bumping’ the phones together which then shares the contact details you have enabled. It’s aim is to save on the need to read out details to each other and remove the risk of manual data entry mistakes.

In practice when I tried the app between my Android based HTC Hero and an iPhone I observed that:

• You don’t actually have to collide the phones, or your knuckles together
• Both parties have to make a positive gesture to activate the accelerometer
• The bump gesture needs to be done at the same time
• Bump seems to make use of the GPS function in some way
• Bluetooth is not used so it must transfer the data over the Internet thus using the GPS coordinates and IP address to associate the 2 devices

BBC Click said that they noticed issues when trying this cross platform, but it work without an issue for me.
Download it from the Android Market and Apple App Store now and give it a try!

Have you ever looked at your mobile operators network coverage map, seen that they give full signal strength only to find out that it is marginal at best?

Sensorly is a privately funded company that intends on making the invisible, visible.  The have released an app on the Android market that uses location and signal strength information direct from the phone to map your operators ‘actual’ network coverage.

BBC’s, Click show calls this type of data collection crowdsourcing.  So the more people that install the application the faster it will populate the database and the more accurate the data will be.

I  have been using the application for the past week or so and it appears to have 2 modes in which it operates.  The first is fairly passive whereby all you will notice is that ever once and a while the phones screen will activate and it will collect the information.  The other you can start manually via the application and it will run time collecting as much data as possible.

Running the auto mode seems to have little impact on the phones overall battery usage (I tend to charge the phone whilst sleeping) but the active method sucks the battery dry in no time at all.

As yet I have not seen any of my data logs on the coverage map so I guess that I am the only one in the area using the tool right now.

The app and the street level operator views are free to download right now but it looks like that could change over time.

Sensorly have plans to release the app on the iPhone platform next, followed by Windows Mobile.  There are no plans at this time for a Blackberry or Symbian release.