Send Money By Bumping iPhones; Split Check With Contacts With PayPal’s New iPhone App
PayPal, eBay's popular online transaction division has released a new version of their iPhone application that gives the app a much needed face-lift.
In addition to this, PayPal 2.0 also brings several exciting new features to the iPhone that could make the app all the more useful.
Bump to Send Money:
PayPal has partnered with Bump Technologies to offer an easy way for users to initiate transactions with friends by bumping their iPhones together. The prominent display of the easy-to-use bump feature in the new version of the app is possibly an attempt at making PayPal the platform of choice among friends to send and receive money.
Split the Check:
The iPhone app offers an easy way to split bills, calculate tips and instantly request contacts for their share of the bill.
PayPal's updated iPhone app also includes:
- Withdraw PayPal funds to local bank account
- Request contacts for money
- Set reminders to pay rent or bills
- Refer the app to a friend
PayPal is among the earliest iPhone apps to be available on the App Store and it continues to be a popular way for iPhone users to make transactions on the go. The new design and features should make the process much simpler and intuitive especially to transfer money between friends. If you wish to install this app, you may do so by clicking here (iTunes Link).
Bump to send money and split the check are quite cool features. As always, do let us know your views on PayPal's new iPhone app in the comments section below.
[via TechCrunch]
New Bing iPhone App Includes Bookmarks, Location Based Search, Parental Controls & More
Microsoft has released an updated version of their iPhone app that is now available for download from the App Store.
The new version of the app fixes a lot of stability and design issues besides introducing a few nifty features.
Here is a run-down of the major additions in the new version of Bing's iPhone app
Bookmarks: The Bing app now makes it easy for users to bookmark any page from the app including maps, business listings, search results, directions and weather reports. These bookmarks may be directly accessed from the Bing homepage.
Location Based Search: The new Bing app makes it extremely easy to search for results based on your current location. Users may also choose to search around specific locations using the location settings on the application.
Parental Control: The new Bing app introduces stricter parental controls by offering users to secure SafeSearch levels for their apps with passcodes to protect kids from unsafe results.
Besides these updates, there are also significant additions like:
- Easy link sharing
- Copy paste URLs
- Search from history
- Private search
- Integration of contacts in directions
Bing's new iPhone app has also added support to the first generation of iPod Touch. The application has been extremely popular on the App Store and has been downloaded over a million times in the three months since it was released.
Update:
For some strange reason, Microsoft seems to have removed its Bing iPhone app from all the International App Store. According to Neowin, Microsoft had this to say about the sudden disappearance of the Bing iPhone app from the App Stores:
"When we released the iPhone application we inadvertently made it available to all countries in which the Apple Marketplace has a presence. We noticed the error within 24 hours and took steps to remove availability for all countries except for the US."
Microsoft hopes to re-release their iPhone app on the International App Store sometime in the future but hasn't given any dates. Neowin points out:
"Microsoft originally released the Bing iPhone application in December 2009. It's not clear why it took three months to remove the availability for all countries except the U.S."
Interested readers in the US can check out Bing's iPhone app from the App Store by clicking here (iTunes link).
This brings me to the question that I wanted to ask you folks for quite sometime now. I personally prefer to search on the web using iPhone's Safari browser (Google as the default search engine) rather than use a native iPhone app. How about you? Do you use Google Mobile App or Bing app on your iPhone? Let us know in the comments.
Football – Real Kick App Turns Your iPhone Into A Football Player
This has to be one of the coolest things you might have seen an iPhone do.
Folks at Qneo figured out the iPhone speaker pushes air for certain sounds and have used it to turn the iPhone into a football player (kind of).
With Football – Free Kick iPhone app, you can kick small Styrofoam balls by blowing air out of the speaker opening.
The iPhone app is very easy to use. You have to tap on the “kick” button to push air. You can play with your friends on a hand drawn football field with multiple iPhones.
You can checkout the video below to see how it works, it’s quite impressive:
Football – Real Kick works only on the iPhone and is available on the App Store for $0.99 [iTunes Link].
As always, let us know what you think about Football - Real kick in the comments.
Multi-tasking On iPhone With Multifl0w Jailbreak Application
One of the most popular app among jailbroken iPhone users is Backgrounder - the free app that allows you to multitask; a feature almost omnipresent among smartphones but something that remains unavailable for iPhone users till date.
Now here is another iPhone app that improvises on Backgrounder to create a better multitasking experience (think Palm Pre).
Backgrounder lets you open multiple applications and also helps in identifying all these iPhone apps running in the background with a badge. With mutifl0w, you may additionally slide through all the open apps and easily toggle between them. Double-tapping your iPhone home button takes you to the multifl0w screen where all the open apps are displayed. Tapping on an iPhone app displays it in full screen for you to work on while the other apps continue to run in the background. It helps if you are on iPhone 3GS since the higher RAM capacity means you can toggle between lot more iPhone apps.
Multifl0w is currently available for iPhone OS 3.0 and above and is built over Backgrounder. There are a few minor bugs at this moment though, which includes a springboard crash when the multifl0w app is opened simulataneously with another loading app. However, the app developer says updates would soon be made available for these.
The app is already available on Rock and should also be available on Cydia soon. While you do have a free trial, the jailbreak iPhone app costs $4.99, which we feel is slightly higher considering that the base app Backgrounder and the other popular multitasking app for jailbroken iPhones, Kirikae are both free.
Nevertheless, $5 is still a small price to pay for such a valuable utility denied for quite sometime by Apple as running multiple applications could drain your iPhone's battery quickly. If you have downloaded multifl0w, please don't forget to tell us your experience.
[via AppAdvice]
ProSwitcher – Free Multitasking iPhone Application
Those of you who had tried the beta version of the free multitasking iPhone app for jailbroken iPhones, Proswitcher, will vouch for the fact that this is one of the best multitasking app available for iPhones.
Now, good news folks. The iPhone app just has been officially released and includes more enhancements.
When we had written about the beta version of the app earlier this month, we had a lot of positive things to say about it. Not only does this iPhone app integrate very seamlessly with the native look and feel of the iPhone, but also it consumes way less memory than the other popular multitasking app, multifl0w. Available for free against the $5 that you had to shell out for multifl0w, this was no doubt a very good deal.
Having said that, the official release now comes with a lot more enhancements as well. Here is what you get to have in addition to what was available in the beta version:
App Card Badges: The app card badges display new notifications from the app running in the background everytime you launch Proswitcher. For instance, new mail notifications on your mail app will now be visible at the top right corner of the app card.
Set Home Screen: This is a new option available in the Settings. By using this option, you can choose whether to view the ProSwitcher screen or the Home Screen every time you close a running app.
Bigger Active Card: The beta version of ProSwitcher displayed all iPhone apps running in the background in the same size. Now, the active card alone is shown in a bigger size over the other running apps. This is not a major change, but definitely has a better appeal.
If you are interested in trying this iPhone app out, you can download it from Cydia on your jailbroken iPhone. As always, don't forget to tell us how you find the new iPhone app.
[Via Iphonehacks]
Circuitous – Multitasking iPhone Application
There are quite a few multitasking apps for jailbroken iPhones. While apps like ProSwitcher and Multifl0w do a good job, here is another jailbreak iPhone app that offers another good user experience to toggle between iPhone applications.
Dan Zimmerman, the developer behind Circuitous calls it a "custom app switcher".
Circuitous is an app that provides a clean interface to switch between the various active iPhone applications. Unlike ProSwitcher and Multifl0w where users need to move away from the existing iPhone app to surf through other active applications, Circuitous displays all the active iPhone apps in a vertical dock that can be accessed from any screen of your iPhone.
Using Circuitous, it is possible to activate the custom dock through several shortcuts like short-holding the Sleep button, double pressing the Home button or double tapping the status bar on your iPhone. Also, users may cycle forward or backward through the various open applications using shortcuts like the ones mentioned above. All these customizations may be made via iPhone Settings. Check out the video below to see Circuitous in action:
Circuitous is available for free on Cydia and Rock. The new version of Circuitous (v1.1) also offers additional features like closing and reordering active iPhone apps with simple gestures. Do checkout the iPhone app and let us know if you think its better than ProSwitcher or Multifl0w.
[via ModMyi]
How to add a simple guest book to your site
So How to add a simple guest book to your site? The code below will help visitors to your site to read your guestbook entries and post a message of their own. Very simple setup, only requires you to change 4 settings. This code uses MySQL to store the entries.
<?php
/**
* Create the table in your MySQL database:
*
* CREATE TABLE guests (
* id int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
* name varchar(50) NOT NULL,
* message varchar(255) NOT NULL,
* date timestamp(14) NOT NULL,
* PRIMARY KEY (id)
* )
*
* Change the database login settings to your own
*
* The script is now ready to run
*/
// Change these to your own database settings
$host = "localhost";
$user = "username";
$pass = "password";
$db = "database";
mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass) OR die ("Could not connect to the server.");
mysql_select_db($db) OR die("Could not connect to the database.");
$name = stripslashes($_POST['txtName']);
$message = stripslashes($_POST['txtMessage']);
if (!isset($_POST['txtName'])) {
$query = "SELECT id, name, message, DATE_FORMAT(date, '%D %M, %Y @ %H:%i') as newdate FROM guests ORDER BY id DESC";
$result = mysql_query($query);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_object($result)) {
?>
<p><strong><?php echo $row->message; ?></strong>
<br />Posted by <?php echo $row->name; ?> on <?php echo $row->newdate; ?></p>
<?php
}
?>
<p>Post a message</p>
<form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; ?>">
<p><label for="txtName">Name:</label><br />
<input type="text" title="Enter your name" name="txtName" /></p>
<p><label for="txtMessage">Your message:</label><br />
<textarea title="Enter your message" name="txtMessage"></textarea></p>
<p><label title="Send your message">
<input type="submit" value="Send" /></label></p>
</form>
<?php
}
else {
// Adds the new entry to the database
$query = "INSERT INTO guests SET message='$message', name='$name', date=NOW()";
$result = mysql_query($query);
// Takes us back to the entries
$ref = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
header ("Location: $ref");
}
?>
The code above is referenced from http://www.totallyphp.co.uk
How to make an e-mail contact form on your website?
This is a simple form mail PHP script that displays a contact form to enable visitors to your site to send the website administrator a message via email. Built in security will prevent spammers hijacking it from another domain.
<?php
/**
* Change the email address to your own.
*
* $empty_fields_message and $thankyou_message can be changed
* if you wish.
*/
// Change to your own email address
$your_email = "you@example.com";
// This is what is displayed in the email subject line
// Change it if you want
$subject = "Message via your contact form";
// This is displayed if all the fields are not filled in
$empty_fields_message = "<p>Please go back and complete all the fields in the form.</p>";
// This is displayed when the email has been sent
$thankyou_message = "<p>Thankyou. Your message has been sent.</p>";
// You do not need to edit below this line
$name = stripslashes($_POST['txtName']);
$email = stripslashes($_POST['txtEmail']);
$message = stripslashes($_POST['txtMessage']);
if (!isset($_POST['txtName'])) {
?>
<form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; ?>">
<p><label for="txtName">Name:</label><br />
<input type="text" title="Enter your name" name="txtName" /></p>
<p><label for="txtEmail">Email:</label><br />
<input type="text" title="Enter your email address" name="txtEmail" /></p>
<p><label for="txtMessage">Your message:</label><br />
<textarea title="Enter your message" name="txtMessage"></textarea></p>
<p><label title="Send your message">
<input type="submit" value="Send" /></label></p>
</form>
<?php
}
elseif (empty($name) || empty($email) || empty($message)) {
echo $empty_fields_message;
}
else {
// Stop the form being used from an external URL
// Get the referring URL
$referer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
// Get the URL of this page
$this_url = "http://".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
// If the referring URL and the URL of this page don't match then
// display a message and don't send the email.
if ($referer != $this_url) {
echo "You do not have permission to use this script from another URL.";
exit;
}
// The URLs matched so send the email
mail($your_email, $subject, $message, "From: $name <$email>");
// Display the thankyou message
echo $thankyou_message;
}
?>
The code is referenced from http://www.totallyphp.co.uk
Display a different image for each day of the week
This PHP code will help you get the day of the week from the server date and then display an image (jpg or gif) to match.
<?php
/**
* Change the name of the image folder
*
* Images must be named Monday.gif, Tuesday.gif etc
*/
// Change to the location of the folder containing the images
$image_folder = "images/days";
// You do not need to edit below this line
$today = date('l');
if (file_exists($image_folder."/".$today.".gif")) {
echo "<img src=\"$image_folder/".$today.".gif\">";
}
else {
echo "No image was found for $today";
}
?>
The above code is referenced from http://www.totallyphp.co.uk
Remove all characters except letters and numbers from a string
If you insert a new value to a MySQL database, and the id is an auto_increment, this simple function will obtain the id for you without having to do a new query on the database. This is the easiest way to get the id from a newly added row using a MySQL insert query without having to do a second query.
<?php
$string = "This is some text and numbers 12345 and symbols !£$%^&";
$new_string = ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "", $string);
echo $new_string
?>