MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR SMARTPHONE

Would it not be nice if you can make some money from all those hours you spend on Candy Crush and its ilks?  Well, you cannot, or at least I don't know that, but there is a group of apps, under the mPoints umbrella, that can actually make you some money.  Note that I did not say the apps will make you rich.  If there is one, I don't know yet.  But these mPoints apps can make you, say, $5 every few weeks.

I first learned about the mPoints network while playing What's The Phrase.  The game is sorta like Wheel of Fortune, where you take turn guessing letters of a phrase and solve it.  Let's say you play a game with someone and lost so you started a new game.  The action earns you a few points.  You play some more games and guess the correct phrase with just a few letters revealed.  That is called a Dedicated Achievement and earn you even more points.  Just opening the app at least once a day gets you 5 points.  You get the idea.  Just using the app as you normally would and you get points that accumulate toward different rewards.  I mostly go for $5 or $10 Amazon gift cards but if you have the patience you can save enough for Chromecast and other high-point items.

Next I started using Challenges, which tracks distance one covers on foot etc.  For me, it's basically a GPS tracker to help me log kilometers as I run or walk.  The app also supports an honor system whereby you can enter manually distance you walk or run etc.  I'm too lazy for that and rather just use the apps outdoor and let the gyroscope do the calculation.  As you may have guessed, yes you earn points for open the app at least once a day but you also get extra points for greater time duration.  For example, running 30 minutes get some points but logging an hour gets you even more.  Other Achievements include working out in the early hours, on the weekends, x days in a row.  Just use it and you get points.

While Challenges offer many activities to choose from, I use mostly Running, Walking, and Cycling.  Sometimes having too many choices turn you off, if that's the case you can use Pedometer by Runtastic.  Pedometer only records walking and is great for using indoor.  You can just hold the phone in your hand and swing it around to simulate motion but of course you would only deprive yourself the exercise of walking.

Crackle is another mPoints app that I use, although not as frequently as I want.  You basically watch movies and TV shows with Crackle to earn points.  You end up investing more time, at least 20+ minutes with shows and upward of an hour and a half with movies.  Yes, shows and movies have ads wedged into them so your watching experience is interrupted, but it is a small price to do things legit.

All mPoints apps have the check-in functions whereby you can log your presence near stores and such on a map to earn points.  Some businesses offer more points than others, so sometimes I would plan my exercise runs to pass by the high-point places.  I suppose the app's goal is to get you to patronize the business but you don't have to.  Right in my house I can log into a Rite Aid and a 7 Eleven every hours until the daily limit is reached.  Sure I buy stuff from them as needed, but you don't have to buy anything each time you check-in.

The check-in function must be popular enough so that mPoints spin it into its own apps, mPlaces.  mPlaces doesn't do anything too useful other than let you check-in.  Sure it provides a map that may be able to help if you are lost, but the whole point of mPlaces is checking-in.  Unlike the old check-in that limits 15 visits per day, mPlaces allow up to 25 visits.  There are also many ways to earn bonus points inside the app.  My favorites are the Challenges, whereby you need to visit certain locations as specified by the challenges.  For example, one past Sports Challenge required visiting a sports arena in addition to finding special coins that review certain sports ball.  I walked a little extra distance to visit Madison Square Garden but strangely it didn't register.  Luckily, before the Sports Challenge ended, I happened to be in St. Louis and was able to walk by Edward Jones Dome to clinch the challenge.  I love walking around in new places so mPlaces along with either Challenges or Pedometer do me much good.  If you drive though, mPlaces is smart enough to not allow you to check into places.  Good thing, we have enough distracted drivers as is.

Now go forth and earn some beer money with the various mPoints apps out there!

http://getmpoints.com/mpoints-apps/

Dumb Move With Smartphone?

The Garmin was not my only recent, big purchase.  I know, $200 is considered big by us frugal people.  After years of using a plain old cell phone, I finally made the jump to a, drum roll please, smartphone.  No, it was not an iPhone, but just some Android thingie that the salesperson offered.  Much as I would love to have an iPhone, the cost is still beyond my budget.  If it is just myself, I could bite the bullet but I have a family plan.  The kids have the same phone model so the adults might as well have the same crappy phones.  No one is jealous that someone else has a better phone.  At least that was the plan.  To be exact, I have a Samsung Galaxy S with 8 GB of storage.  The OS is Frozen Yogurt, I believe.  I read a bit about AndroidOS and the different versions have food names, like Ice Cream Sandwich and Donut.  Weird choice of code name.  I had to make a cartoon for ATPM.com poking fun at the names.


I never own an iPhone but I had an iPod touch and still have a first-gen iPad.  iOS is not perfect but then the experience with Android is even more imperfect.  When I got the Galaxy it already had many apps so I do not what apps are standard.  I listen to music and such a lot so Music Player is my most used apps.  I send files from the Mac to the Galaxy via Bluetooth then manually create playlists.  I have not tried hard enough to find an app that would sync playlists, files, etc so it is a pain to manage music.  Per Leo Laporte on TWIT, Winamp for Android may be just what I need.


A smartphone is not much use if you do not have a data plan.  I think a typical plan with an iPhone is $30 a month.  My plan is $10 a month, but for only, you better sit down in case this makes you laugh too hard, a whopping 200 MB.  I only do email and Facebook so, hard to believe, but 200 MB is really more than enough.  At this moment, I have about seven more days to go before the new month rolls in and I only used 27% of that 200 MB.  I did blow that 200 MB once when I tested the tethering feature on the Galaxy and my son watched some YouTube video.  Dumb mistake!  Still, it is nice that the feature is built-in and can be used as long as your data plan can handle it.  Not like how with Apple you have to play the game of cat-and-mouse with jail-breaking.


I can live with the measly data plan, but I wish the apps would behave more like iOS apps.  They just don't work right.  First time I launched the Facebook app, the one that has the UI more like the latest iPad app, it asks me to "Download Browser.  Download my new app: fast and save power Browser!", I clicked "Download", it downloaded something and installed it.  Next time again, it offered the same choices of "Download" and "Ignore Forever".  I clicked "Ignore Forever" and guess what the next time I launched the app?  "Forever" already came and went so it asked me to download again!  One time, after being sick of telling the app to ignore forever, I clicked Download and it tried to download from the MarketPlace but lo and behold there was nothing to download.  Likewise, trying to post to the Plurk social network is a pain.  There's a Plurk app but it somehow needs Maxthon app, which turns out to be an alternative web browser!?  Wait, there's more!  Each time you want to use the Plurk app, it will just tell you to download the Plurk app.  No, to use Plurk, you would launch Maxthon.  It is a lousy experience, like how I often envision those people who buy the cheapest netbook running Windoze only to put up with Windoze errors and problems.  Maybe my next smartphone will be an iPhone after all.  Help me reach that dream by clicking on them Google Ads liberally sprinkled around the blog!