DriveSafe.ly – Compliments of BlackBerry

First of the BlackBerry apps released as compensation was DriveSafe.ly, which is normally $19.99USD.

Simply put, it reads your messages out for you. Anybody seen Echelon conspiracy? Didn’t you always want an app that will read your text messages out to you into your minuscule bluetooth earphone? Well this is exactly what this app does, you might have to source your own headset (it works without a headset too).

Just not worth it, not even for free. It reads all your messages as they come, and lets you reply by voice. No use to me as firstly I don’t drive, and secondly I really don’t want to be replying to all my messages in public. Who wants to reply to their messages out loud? And having to repeat it a few times while the app decides to put wrong words in? Yea not any of us.

Also its not really good with ‘text speech’. So if your texts, or messages look anything like this:

“Yea if u gt a txt dats typd lyk dis, den it wnt reli read it proprlii init”

it won’t be able to read them. You’ll just hear some gibberish.

Some positives? It supports a lot of different languages. Its powered by iSpeech.org, so somewhat reliable while converting text to speech.

And lastly, I prefer typing my own messages. Everybody has their own style of typing and stuff, and it would just be wrong to have a ‘bot’ type my text for me! It’s just wrong?

So my final verdict, unless you find it hard to read texts or find it hard to work your phone in general, then yea sure go for it. In fact definitely go for it, seeing as its free – compliments of BlackBerry. But if you prefer to type your texts and work your own phone with your own hands, and make sure only what you typed gets sent as messages and that your emails and messages are not read out loud, especially not in front of other people, then this app is just a waste of memory on your phone.

#BBM – How to read BBM messages without notifying the sender

One of BlackBerry Messenger’s great features is the notification system. Yes, the small tick with the ‘D’ or ‘R’ next to it telling the sender that your message has been Delivered or Read by the recipient.

We’ve all had times when we do not want to reply to the message straight away. But you’ve read the message. So the sender knows you’re not replying, on purpose! They’re gonna hate you. They’re gonna think there’s something wrong with you. The same old ‘why didnt you reply to my message?’ question will pop up in the next question. I mean it was all good with text messaging where you could just say ‘o sorry, I didn’t get your text’ or ‘I didn’t read it’; but these pathetic excuses don’t work with BBM messages. Your sender knows that the message was delivered, in fact they even know you read it because their little tick next to the message had a ‘R’ written next to it.

The Read and Delivered status

So how to read the message, without having that ‘D’ status change to ‘R’.

To put it simply: Chat History.

Yes.

You must ‘Save Chat History’. Yes that must be enabled for you to sneakily read the message without notifying the sender. What you do next is simple. When you receive a new message, just View Chat History for that contact and open the most recent chat history. There you will see the message and you can happily read it.

This way it will never inform the sender that you have read the message and you won’t be pressured into replying straight away!

Have fun. Stay sneaky.

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VisualBee – how to easily enhance your powerpoint presentations. . .

Having a good looking presentation or just blank slides with text can make the difference receiving top grades or going through with that business deal. And now you don’t need to be a pro to make amazing looking presentations. I’m a very lazy person and I like cutting corners and taking shortcuts; and have found the perfect tool for making my life just a little bit easier.

VisualBee (http://www.visualbee.com/) is a plugin for microsoft powerpoint (2007 tested, should also works with others). Its the easiest thing to use. Just make your blank powerpoint with your text or any other graphics you would like to add. Then click enhance presentation, to simply enhance your presentation.

You will need to register for free with VisualBee to be able to use the service. It reads your presentation, searches for keywords, finds appropriate pictures and adds them to your presentation, along with rearranging layouts and adding animation.

Here is an example of my stupid geography presentation on glass recycling and as you can see I am very very lazy with my presentations =)

Glass recycling withouth bee

View more presentations from Mansimran Singh

Now after a few simple clicks on VisualBee this is the result:

Glass recycling visual bee

View more presentations from Mansimran Singh

I did not add any pictures or edit any layouts, etc. VisualBee provides you with 5 different types of presentations to chose from and you can also edit your layout or change the pictures manually not totally happy with what it does. My whole presentation took me literally 2 mins and I think VisualBee is one of the most useful tools for lazy people like me!!

Watch their demo at :
http://www.visualbee.com/index.php/demo.html