Find Restaurant Reviews

Yelp.com is one of the leading online review sites, so it would only make sense that they offer a mobile application as well. Powered by their community, Yelp is full of detailed consumer reviews and ratings from people who have actually eaten at these restaurants.

Get a Random Restaurant Recommendation

When you can’t make up your mind on where you want to eat, why not let your phone choose for you. Using UrbanSpoon.com’s mobile application, you can customize the general category of food you are interested in eating and then shake your iPhone to get a result. They describe it as part magic 8 ball, part slot machine – Urban Spoon seems to be a fun way to settle the oh-so-typical food indecisiveness.

Order Food on Your Mobile Device

For those of you who do know what they want, but simply don’t want to waste the time of going to the restaurant to order and prefer a web interface for placing their order, check out CityMint.com. City Mint has hundreds of menus that you can scroll through to find and order the food you want. The only downside is that City Mint is currently limited to San Francisco, but they are planning to expand, so keep checking in.

Cell phone contracts can be one of the biggest hassles, often just as involved as a lease on a car. With early termination fees, text messaging fees, data plan usage, insurance, state and usage taxes, the fees seem to add up very quickly after the great $19.99 offer you thought you had for a new blackberry. If you have come to the point where you want to get out of an existing cell phone contract but you don’t want to pay the $150 – $250 penalty for early cancellation, check out CellSwapper.com.

Cell Swapper is a marketplace for those who are looking to end their existing contracts and those looking to get great deals on previously held contracts. There are many people on the site so anxious to get rid of their contract that they will offer the phone with it, for free! However, this makes plenty of sense when early cancellation can cost up to $250 and a new plan under a new carrier could mean new phone for less than the termination fee.

Take a look through Cell Swapper next time you feel fed up with your carrier or are shopping around for a new phone.

Lithium-ion batteries, the most common battery in cell phones today, have allowed cell phones to become smaller, lighter and hold their charge better than some of its preceding technologies. However, despite these advantages most people will find that their cell phone still seems to lose its charge after a few months of use. The good news is that this can usually be prevented; the bad news is that it’s your fault in the first place.

Here are five of the top ways you can improve the life of your cell phone battery:

1. Let your battery almost die before charging and don’t leave it on the charger after it reaches 100%
2. If you don’t have signal, shut off your phone
3. Turn off the vibration function of your cell phone
4. Turn off your phone’s backlight or set it to 15 seconds
5. Avoid heavy use of features such as the camera, internet or games

No matter what you do, your cell phone battery will slowly lose its charge over its lifetime. However, following the above tips will at least delay the inevitable.

With offers such as ‘new ever two’ and new models of cell phones coming out at a steady pace, it’s easy to find yourself with you a pile of old mobiles that you no longer need or use. Rather than simply letting them collect dust, there are a wide variety of companies and programs that will either buy back or recycle your old devices.

For those who would like to make back the money they spent on that old Palm Treo, check out sites such as Gazelle that will buy back old electronic devices. You can also look to sites such as eBay or Craigslist as places to sell your old cell phone. Of course, there are many more socially responsible things you can do with your left over cell phones such as donating them to programs that give these devices to people in need.

Nowadays, having your cell phone on you at all times is the norm. With the rise in text messaging, phone applications and use in general, it often seems as if your cell phone is controlling you. It’s time to take back that control and begin using your cell phone like a personal assistant.

With the following web applications, you can take advantage of your mobile device just as you would an assistant: note taking, research and directory lookup.

Goog411

Google offers a free 411 service, meaning you can call them up and find out any business name, phone number and address. Just like a traditional 411 service, you simply dial their number, say your business name and location, and a live person will connect you to the business you are looking for. The advertisements, if any, are never more than a few seconds and you save having to pay the normal $1.50 fee. To learn more about Goog411, visit their website.

Cha Cha

Think of Cha Cha as a human powered mobile search engine. Give them any question that can be answered within a text message and they get back to you within 2-5 minutes free of charge (carrier text messaging fees apply). Finding out the weather, score to a recent game, location of a restaurant are all easily done through either a text or call to Cha Cha. They employ a large network of real people who then do the research and respond to your question. To learn more about Cha Cha, visit their website.

Jott

When you are on the run, driving in your car or don’t have access to a pen and paper, Jott is a perfect way to record notes, reminders and tasks for yourself. After you register your phone with Jott, you simply dial their number, indicate who you want to leave a message for (either yourself or anyone from your list of contacts) and record your note. They offer a free version and premium versions that integrate with outlook. To learn more about Jott, visit their website.

With these services, you can easily turn your cell phone or mobile device into a personal assistant on the go.