Aspect of the Daddy March 25, 2014

Hey guys, it's time for another quick post for Aspect of the Daddy! Today's show features an app called Carat and it will help you figure ways to extend the life of your battery on your Android and iOS devices. It's free and available on the Google Play Store and the App store on iOS.

Carat works by comparing your phone's performance with all the other phones using the app. Did I mention that this is a project of UC Berkeley? So there's no commercial aspect here, nobody is making money on the app or your data.

Just install Carat and open it a couple of times a week. When it's open, Carat will send your data to the cloud and the servers will crunch your data and give you some interesting information for you to look at. Carat will show you bugs that it's found and energy hogs, and tell you how to stop the offending apps from using up your battery. It also is able to tell you how much battery you will save by following the advice it gives.

Because of the nature of the operating systems, Carat works wonders on Android and works well on iOS. iOS tends to wall off apps from talking to one another, as a security measure, and Carat is limited on iPhones. It also takes Carat much longer to return data on iPhones. I suspect that iOS 7's aggressive task killing is to blame here.

Regardless, with enough time, Carat might save you a couple of hours (or more) of battery life during your day.  Find the download links below and don't forget to listen to my segments on the HearthCast podcasts!

Source: Carat 

Download on Android
Download on iOS

Link to Aspect of the Daddy on HearthCast 

Aspect of the Daddy Episode 3 Toca Cars

On today's episode of Aspect of the Daddy, we talked about Toca Cars, by Toca Boca. Caleb who is three, just loves this game, and I really wanted to pass it on to other adults that care for kids. The game is available for iTunes, Google Play and The Amazon App store.

This game is a simple, but extremely fun car game. The game uses a touch system to drive the car, and since this is geared towards kids, driving is as simple as one finger on the screen. The car will head towards the finger on the screen, so there's no gas or steering to deal with.




Everything in the 'sandbox' is made of cardboard, and the art style is bright and colorful. There are a couple of ways to play, either in a preset world that has a road, ramps and traffic lights. There is also a creative mode where the child can place the cars, ramps, streets and buildings to her liking.

The music and sounds are not quite as irritating as some kid's games can get. I found myself humming along to the music and it was stuck in my head hours after he went to sleep. It's one of those games.

Cars is available on iOS, Android and the Amazon App Store for $2.99, and it's nice that you pay once and you have the game. All of it. In other words, there aren't any in-app purchases to worry about.

Hit up the Toca Cars website for the official download links. Download the latest episode of Aspect Of the Daddy here! 

Free Book This Weekend

There's a series of books that might just grab you and never let you go. The Primitive series is about shape-shifting Tigers and Wolves set in the bayous and swamps of southern Louisiana. The reviews are amazing and the author is smoking hot! If you need a little bit of romance with a twist of paranormal shape-shifting, check out Alicia Sparks and the Primitive Series.

Fitbit Recalling Fitbit Force

Seems like there are some problems with the FitBit Force. There were reports of people wearing the Force getting a rash on their wrists. The CEO of Fitbit, James Park, has gone on to the company blog to detail how he is going to compensate everyone that bought a Fitbit Force. It looks like he is going to give everyone a refund, and of course he is no longer going to sell the Force. However, it seems like the violet Fitbit Flex is still on sale at the time of this writing.

There is going to be a voluntary recall of the Force and Fitbit has set up a recall website, or call 1‑888‑656‑6381. The user will receive a kit to send the Force back to Fitbit, and a refund check will be issued.

There is a rumor of a new device coming from Fibit soon, and seeing how I am in the hunt for a Fitbit myself, I am really looking forward to seeing what Fitbit comes up with.

Source: Fitbit

Aspect of the Daddy Episode 1

Hey, thanks for stopping by and checking out my little place on the Web. Hopefully, this will update every week and I can finally get off my lazy butt and find time to write about tech, toddlers and the pains that come with raising kids. It would be great if you could stop by and say hi in the comments. It is nice knowing that there are people reading this, besides that spam bots.

In the first episode of AotD, I talked about two apps that are pretty noteworthy on your smart phone. For Android, I picked up A Better Camera. This app brings all of the best features of popular Android camera apps like HDR Camera+, Night Camera+ and HD Panorama+ and baked into A Better Camera. The app is free and open source, so it can be incorporated into all of your favorite apps. This is quite an important moment in Android, hopefully all of the best apps in proprietary software like you might see in a Samsung Galaxy S4 or a Note 3.

For you iPhone users out there, you are not left out. You already have a great camera, and great software so I am focusing on another genre here. Facebook finally got an update and it's on a brand-new app. Paper -- stories from Facebook. This is a brand new app, and it looks terrific. It lets swipe and slide your way through not only your Facebook news feed, but you can add news feeds like technology, photography and cooking.

So there's the first episode of AotD, I need to find a place to host my podcast feeds, and write out some more ideas for more episodes. Thanks for the support, and here's to more fun!

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