AirLink
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Daily iPhone App: AirLink allows you to easily share your photos using your HDTV
Though you can easily send photos to your HDTV using an Apple TV, not everyone has Apple's media receiver in their living room. If you are in an Apple TV-less home and want to share your latest pics on an HDTV, all you need is two iOS devices, an AV adapter and the AirLink app from Voyager Apps. AirLink debuted in the iOS App Store earlier this month and allows you to share photos between two iOS devices. One iOS device sits in your hand and controls your photos, while the other iOS device is connected to your television via HDMI or VGA. Launch the app on both devices, tap to launch your photos and voila! Everyone in the room can see your images. The receiver iOS device can accept multiple connections, so more than one person with the AirLink app can share their photos using the system. The only requirements are that all the iOS devices need to be on the same WiFi network and they must have the AirLink app open on their iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. AirLink isn't a sophisticated presentation tool. It's meant to be a quick and easy way to share your holiday photos with friends or family. You can check it out in the iOS App Store. It's a universal app and available for US$1.99. Note: This is not the AirLink app previously mentioned on TUAW. The developer, Phillip Schmitt, stopped working on that bidirectional bookmarklet project earlier this year.
Quickly share website addresses to your iPhone with AirLink
Last week, Erica and Victor shared a hack for transferring the URL of an open webpage from your computer to your iPhone via the intermediary of a QR code. It's easy and quick, but as is often the case our astute commenters pointed to a slew of alternative solutions to tackle the same problem. The suggestions were wide-ranging and clever. There's Ansible, Handoff and MyPhoneDesktop; there's NotesForLater, SendTab and SiteToPhone. All are worth checking out, and depending on how you like your content shared (in an app, in email, with or without push notifications, using a browser extension or via a bookmarklet) you'll find a solid fit. But the one that specifically caught our eye -- and had the most commenter recommendations -- was the AirLink bookmarklet. AirLink is dead simple to set up and use. Just visit the site to install; you'll get a pair of bookmarklets, one for your desktop browser and one for your device. These bookmarks are 'twinned' to each other permanently, so at any time thereafter all you need to do is activate the bookmarklet (on either side) to send the active URL to your device or to your computer. On your iPhone, you can bookmark the URL or add it to the home screen for instant access. It's free, it's easy and it works great. The AirLink bidirectional bookmarklet is the work of the young German developer Phillip Schmitt. You can follow the ongoing development of AirLink on the tool's Twitter feed. Photo: Flickr CC via Cliff1066™
iMobileMinutes for Android refills your prepaid's empty tank
For all you free-wheelers who prefer talking without commitment, iMobileMinutes is giving you one less excuse to go running to the gas station when it's time to top up your cellular account -- thanks to a free set of carrier-specific apps in the Android Market that perform the same function with considerably less effort. Now, you can purchase minutes directly (or get the necessary PIN), in the denomination of your choice, all from the comfort of your Google-powered smartphone. If this sounds appealing, there's support for Alltel, AT&T, Cricket, H2O, Simple Mobile, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless, along with Airlink, Airvoice and Net 10. It's certainly a nifty alternative, but if you're not ready to cut ties with your favorite 7-Eleven clerk just yet, there's always Slurpees. Just don't blame us for the brain freeze, okay?
