This week’s post is a special edition of the iPhone apps of the week. Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year, and though I can’t help you beat the lines or navigate through the crowds, I’ve rounded up a couple of apps that might make your holiday shopping a bit easier. These apps are made for price-checking on the go, so you can make sure you’re getting the lowest price for the item in front of you.

Amazon Mobile needs little in the way of introduction as the mobile companion to the popular shopping site, with a huge database of products so you can compare prices on the go. But I would also like to introduce you to TheFind, a new iPhone app with a unique set of shopping tools that help you get the most bang for your buck by working in tandem with TheFind.com. With these apps in your arsenal and a little luck, you might get exactly what you’re looking for at prices that won’t break the bank.

This week’s apps are both tools for holiday shopping. Get quick access to a huge database of products and prices along with some helpful shopping tools to make your shopping experience easier.

Amazon Mobile (free) is a great one-stop shopping and price-checking app on the iPhone and will be a familiar and intuitive solution for many because it closely resembles the popular shopping destination on the Web. With Amazon’s vast database of merchandise, you’ll be able to easily find just about anything the retail giant sells. Deals, recommendations, and other tools you find at the online site have also made it into this app, and you can log in to see your wish lists and shopping cart if you have an account with Amazon. Best of all, you can buy products with a tap–especially useful if your credit card information is already on file at the Amazon Web site.

Apart from the usual searching and browsing, Amazon has given its app special mobile powers that make the most of the iPhone’s features. In addition to taking photos of items for later reference and purchasing, you can also search for items by scanning the bar code. Like other apps in this category, Amazon Mobile uses the iPhone camera to perform this task, then matches the results to its database. A feature that would be useful to me would be a history of scanned items, but hopefully that feature will arrive in future updates. Overall, if you’re out and about shopping for the holidays, Amazon Mobile is a familiar companion to have for quick price-checking and scanning for better deals.

TheFind (free) is a new app that lets you scan bar codes or search for products like the Amazon Mobile app, but offers a number of other features that will be especially useful to holiday shoppers. Start with a quick scan of the product’s bar code or enter a text search, and TheFind will return a list of prices from the Web. TheFind uses the technology used in RedLaser , an amazingly accurate scanning app that I found to be very effective in an earlier post. Once your product is scanned you have the option to browse tabs at the top that sort by Web sites, stores near your location, or from a list of stores you prefer that can be added by hitting a small plus sign graphic next to each listing. You also get a nice description of each item without ever having to leave the app.

Beyond its price checking capabilities, TheFind gives you added extras to make your shopping experience more affordable and convenient. Once you’re registered at TheFind Web site, you can use the site to find deals while at home, add them to your favorites on the site, then access all your shopping deals on your iPhone while in the trenches on Black Friday. As an added bonus, TheFind will even let you view a map to each store, so you’ll be able to locate the store, brave the lines, find your deals, and get out of there all with the help of one shopping app.

What’s your favorite shopping app for iPhone? Does Amazon Mobile make it easier to find the right price? What do you think of TheFind as a shopping companion? Let me know in the comments!

Don’t forget to check out our free CNET Reviews app to get the rundown on products from CNET Reviews.

These online reverse phone number lookup services have sky rocketed in popularity in recent months due to more people turning to the internet to find answers. Whether someone wants to find out if their spouse is cheating, who a prank caller is or just who that mystery number on the caller ID is a reverse phone number lookup is the best way to find out. The most popular service online right now is where many people are performing their look up searches with 100% accuracy and confidentiality.

The internet has revolutionized the way people find out who is on the other end of the telephone. Now anyone with a few minutes of spare time can find the name, address and virtually any other detail about who’s calling or texting. The best reverse phone number lookup for land lines, cell phones, mobile phones or unlisted numbers is at where reports can be conducted quickly and easily.

Using the web to keep the family safe or make sure a spouse isn’t cheating is finally possible, and these leading reverse phone lookup services are helping to pave the way. With a simple telephone number and a few minutes anyone can find out who’s behind a mobile or cell phone number. Just like many law enforcement agencies use and average Americans reverse directory sites like can work wonders when trying to find out who’s calling.

“Every web browser stores web pages, images and other downloaded content on the computer,” in the browser’s cache, according to wikihow.com, and clearing a computer regularly can protect the user or users and free up some space on the hard drive and memory.

“It is a good practice to clear your cache and delete your cookies regularly,” to assure that your information – your “digital history” – is safe and not visible or available to others.

Although no one can ever completely erase his or her digital history on computers or cell phones, there are several techniques and tips people can use to avoid being stalked or harassed.

Wikihow.com has some steps on how to clear the cache on a computer and following are three different processes for three different browser programs (listed below).

Although technology users may know how to semi-delete data off their devices, Geek Squad Manager Gerald Prado made some suggestions about Internet behavior:

“I think that people don’t quite understand how LARGE the Internet actually is. It’s basically archive after archive. As far as privacy is concerned everything that is uploaded to the Internet is automatically recorded and stored. Logs of the actions being carried out by the user of every computer or electronic device are being created and the devices are storing the data, he said.

That information is sent out to all the people reading the info and “bits of data referencing that specific event on the computers or device is stored” Prado said.

A user’s privacy can also be at stake when it comes to cell phone applications and the different ways phones are used. On cellutips.com, one example of cell phone privacy shows how easy it is to uncover a person’s information.

The example provided is about someone activating his or her credit card on a cell phone and later finding the card number stored in the phone’s memory.

Cellutips.com lists seven tips on how to keep the information on a phone safe (listed below).

Kautz, a senior at Wilkes University, might send a text message to someone across the room – “I can’t wait to get out of here” – or make plans with his roommates. He’s become so adept at texting during class that he can tap out a message without even looking at the screen, making it appear as if he’s paying attention to the instructor when he’s really chatting with his girlfriend.

“Every single person I know texts in class at least occasionally,” said Kautz, a communications studies major from Pelham, N.Y.

It’s no surprise that high school and college students are obsessive texters. What alarms Wilkes psychology professors Deborah Tindell and Robert Bohlander is how rampant the practice has become during class: Their recent study shows that texting at the school has surpassed doodling, daydreaming and note-passing to become the top classroom distraction.

The anonymous survey of 269 Wilkes students found that nine in 10 admit to sending text messages during class – and nearly half say it’s easy to do so undetected. Even more troubling, 10 percent say that they have sent or received texts during exams, and that 3 percent admit to using their phones to cheat.

The phenomenon is part of a broader revolution in the way young adults communicate. Most prefer texting to e-mail and certainly to talking on the phone, Tindell said.

Indeed, most view texting as

The right to text

Almost all the students surveyed by Tindell and Bohlander said they should be allowed to have their phones in class. And a clear majority – 62 percent – said they should be allowed to text in class as long as they’re not disturbing those around them. About one in four said texting creates a distraction.

“Students these days are so used to multitasking … they believe they are able to process information just as effectively when they are texting as when they are not,” Tindell said.

Tom Markley, 21, of Lehighton, Pa., is constantly trading texts with his friends and his girlfriend during class.

“If it’s a really boring class, texting is a nice alternative to having to sit there and focus,” said Markley, a senior computer science major at Wilkes.

But, he conceded, “there are definitely times when it takes away from your concentration. Suddenly you’ll be at the end of the period and say, ‘What did we do today?’”

Tindell instituted a no-texting policy as a result of the study, which has been presented at a pair of academic conferences. She tells students that if she even sees a cell phone during a test, its owner gets an automatic zero.

One Syracuse University professor has taken an even harsher stand.

Laurence Thomas, a popular philosophy professor whose courses have waiting lists, walked out on his class of nearly 400 students last week when he caught a couple of students fiddling with their phones instead of paying attention to him.

It wasn’t the first time Thomas has cut a class short because a student broke his no-texting rule. To Thomas, texting saps the class of its intellectual energy.

“My job is to engage the class, to give them stuff to think about,” he said. “They need to respect that.”

Not clued in

While Thomas keeps his eyes peeled for illicit texters, Tindell said most professors are likely as clueless as she used to be about the ubiquity of in-class cell phone use. Many of the surveyed students said their professors would be shocked if they knew about their texting habits.

Kautz said most of his professors either don’t notice or don’t care if students text during class time. He doesn’t believe a blanket prohibition is the right way to go.

“There are people who can text and still be focused on class,” he said. “If my roommate is short on quarters for laundry and wants to borrow some, of course I’m going to want to text him back right away and not hold him back for 40 minutes.”

But he acknowledged that some students text excessively.

“I know some people will sit there for the entire class just typing away,” he said. “I don’t even know why they bother coming.”

Resisting the urge

Chelsea Uselding, 20, a Wilkes junior from Chicago, sends an average of 150 texts a day. But she’s the rare student who doesn’t text during class – viewing that hour or two as a “nice break” from the phone and its unceasing demands on her time and attention.

There’s also a practical reason why Uselding, a dual major in psychology and international studies, idles her thumbs.

“I’m paying all this money to listen to the person speak, and I figure it’s a waste of my time if I’m not going to be listening,” she said.

Some high school and college teachers have sought to adapt text messaging to classroom use, texting assignments; asking questions of the class and having students respond via text, with the results shown on a large screen; and allowing students to text questions or comments during class.

“Our experience has shown that positive results can be achieved by encouraging students to bring their mobile phones out in the open and to use them to contribute to the class, and to their own learning – that is, by joining them instead of trying to beat them,” New Zealand scholars wrote in a 2009 paper published in the journal Communications of the ACM.

Tindell and Bohlander advise professors to have clear, written policies on texting, to circulate around the classroom and make frequent eye contact, and to avoid focusing all their attention on their lecture notes or PowerPoint presentations.

Tindell does allow students to text before class starts – and almost all of them do.

“If they are going to go through withdrawal,” she quipped, “they might as well get their fix.”

Olive Branch city officials are looking into donating used cell phones to soldiers and their families.

The Board of Aldermen recently declared 142 city cell phones as surplus equipment, a designation that legally allows elected officials to donate them.

The city accumulated the phones over a two- to three-year period, Mayor Sam Rikard said. Some of them weren’t usable with the network of the city’s new cell phone provider, Sprint.

Alderman Don Tullos said one or more organizations can rework the phones. City officials were not sure which organization would get the phones.

Cell Phones For Soldiers, founded by two Massachusetts teenagers, sells donated phones to a company that recycles them. The money is used to buy calling cards for military personnel in need.

Tullos, who had a brother-in-law in Afghanistan, said troops don’t have to completely miss important milestones in the lives of family members.

“They’re away from loved ones, from birthday parties,” Tullos said. “It’s a way of saying ‘thank you.’”

” Toni Lepeska

Hunters can get lesson on safety

The Mississippi Department of Wildlife Fisheries and Parks will hold a free hunters education class Dec. 11 at Cornerstone Church, 5998 Elmore Road.

Among the topics covered in the 10-hour class are gun safety and wildlife management.

Completion of the class is required to buy a Mississippi hunting license for anyone born after 1972 that is 16 years of age or older.

” Raina Hanna

Crafts and cars mix it up at show

Gracewood Baptist Church, 8551 Getwell Road in Southaven, will host a craft fair and car show Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Admission is free. Spaces for vendors and car owners are available. For details, call (662) 393-2549.

” DeSoto Appeal staff

Smoke alarm giveaway ending

The City of Horn Lake, in conjunction with the Mississippi Fire Marshal’s Office, is offering its residents free smoke alarms through Tuesday. They are provided to low-income families, senior citizens, families with children under the age of 14 and individuals with disabilities.

Applications will be accepted at Fire Station No. 3, located at 6363 Miss. 301, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. For information, call (662) 781-1157 and press option 2.

” DeSoto Appeal staff

Mobile is the big thing in computing today. The power of today’s smartphones is amazing. Processors are more powerful, screens bigger and with better resolution, speech recognition improving and text messaging is becoming more than just the way kids communicate.

In order for the local businessperson to take advantage of mobile let’s look at a few different applications and suggestions.

Local Mobile Search (Voice)

One result of all of the power in a smartphone handset is the ability to do voice recognition. Voice activated dialing has been around for quite a while (with unpredictable results) and now there is voice search. I recall about two years ago I purchased my Google G1 phone (they had not yet started calling them Android phones). Returning from a ski trip near Seattle I wanted to pick up a pizza on the way home. Not knowing where my favorite pizza place (Papa Murphy’s Take and Bake) was, I pulled out my new phone and said “papa murphys pizza”. Well, up popped a short list of Papa Murphy’s, the closest being just a few miles ahead. I pressed the address field to be given directions and uponpressing the “navigate” button, followed the voice directions to my pizza!

Typically the voice search function draws upon Google search results. Due to the small screen size of the mobile phone you will only see three listings.(Yes, you guessed it, it pays to be in the top three for your local business and your selected keywords!)

Local Mobile Search (Text)

Voice recognition does not have all of the fun. While our kids are texting away about every little thing going on, adults and businesses are slower at embracing text messaging for business purposes. (Note: A significant portion of charitable donations for disaster relief are driven by text messaging).

A neat little feature is texting Google for information. By simply sending a text message to Google (466453) and entering a keyword search phrase you will get a text message back in a few moments with results. Text “seattle pizza” to Google (466453) and, “poof”- in just a few moments you receive suggestions that… you guessed it-are from the top of the Google search results!

Mobile Optimized Website

The trend, as it should be, is to have a parallel mobile website. Now this does not mean you need a totally separate site, but rather that you have the essential pages and information needed to achieve a conversion. Remember the screen real estate on a smartphone is significantly less than on a desktop monitor. The other issue is that many of the menu options will not work all that well. This is due both to technology and what I call Fat Finger Syndrome (FFS). The mobile screen is small and your menu items need to be easy to select.

The easiest way to do this is to use a parallel site design controlled by a site plugin dedicated to creating mobile menus. Now, when someone uses their smartphone to access your site, it will detect if there is a mobile site and automatically select it. I advise you to only make available a few basic pages to the mobile visitor. They are not all that likely to spend tons of time there reading blog posts and so forth. In most cases they are looking for something immediate (like a pizza) and you want them to be able to call or find you easily.

In your mobile-oriented menu pages you should ensure your phone number and address are viewable on the screen immediately (above the fold). On all of the smartphones you can click the phone number and your phone will dial the number straight away. On some phones you can highlight the address and get driving directions presented to you.

Summary

Don’t miss out on the ever growing mobile apps world. The smartphone is rapidly becoming a second computer, or for younger folks, their primary computer. Ensure you are where you potential clients are searching for you, your goods, your information or your services.

Be ready today, it’s not that hard!

More than just a phone for large numbers of juveniles, the cell phone has become a status symbol and fashion accessory; young people often feel cheated if they cannot upgrade every six months to keep up with the latest fully-featured model. As far as the professional world is concerned, the cell phone has a much more important, if mundane to some, function. They simply use it to communicating important information instantly around the globe. With their constant improvements, the functions of modern day phones are growing faster than any other sector of technology, except maybe computing! To help feed this technology frenzy, accessory companies like Audiovox cell phone accessories have become proficient at introducing new phones and optional extras to go with them.

Models are now much smaller but with improved functions and design, Audiovox have cell phones and accessories for every occasion. Not all accessories are just for fun either as the power cord will prove because it not only charges the battery for you but helps to make it last longer at the same time.

Accessories also include a hip clip holder that can be functional for any type of cell phone even if it isn’t for an Audiovox product. A particularly clever device is the headset that allows you to use the cell phone without having to hold it which is a great idea for drivers or people that need their hands free while they work. This will help to avoid accidents due to one hand driving and decreased attention on the road.

The latest Audiovox range include hands and wire free kits to enable the use of the phone whilst it is a holster with no cables attached and clear up background interference. You can clearly hear the person on the other line, even while driving or carrying out other tasks where background noise might be an issue.

The Jabra hands free headset is one such model in the range able to do this. Jabra is small, lighter than other headsets and stylish; it also functions as a speaker phone and thus is a more functional gadget for your cell phone.

The multi-functional antenna for instance, is attached to your car while you drive, and it functions well when you talk to another person on the other line while the car is in motion. If you are looking for functionality in your cell phone, try to find an Audiovox cell phone with the matching earphone accessory. For young upwardly cell professionals trying to do carry out many things at the same time these are a great idea as they leave your hands free, which should make it easier if you want to make notes during the call. Audiovox cell phones have produced a range of accessories designed to help you get the most out of your cell phone and make your life safer.