Lewi Hirvela Online

Online Shopping for Geeks - Gadgets

Dealextreme.com is one of the best online stores I’ve come across for gadgets and geek stuff. It’s like ThinkGeek or catchoftheday.com.au but with a big difference - free shipping and no minimum orders - even on $1-5 items. catchoftheday.com.au is pretty popular here in Australia for all sorts of cheap items on a daily basis, but I’ve seen a lot of the same items being sold on dealextreme.com for a lot less.

Shipping is from Hong Kong and for what I ordered, there’s no real noticeable difference in the delivery time as something ordered from an Australian online retailer using regular post. It arrived in about a week from the day I ordered. Remember, everything’s “Made in China” anyway.

What I ordered was an iPhone car mount, screen protector and case for about $8 USD. Did I say free shipping? All arrived in perfect condition and the build quality of the car mount seems just as good as more expensive ones.

It reminds me of when I lived in Hong Kong and the prices I found when popping into Sham Shui Po computer centre. Still, I’m sure it’s slightly more expensive than that, but one thing’s for certain - it’s a heck of a lot less than here in Australia.

www.dealextreme.com

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iPhone apps running in the background

Today I discovered a small app in Cydia called Backgrounder. For those that don’t know, Cydia is an app store type application that’s installed when you jailbreak an iPhone. It’s mostly filled with tweaks, early 3rd party apps and some new ones too.

Backgrounder allows most apps from the App Store to run in the background. For example my GPS fitness app, RunKeeper, will keep running when I return to the home screen. TomTom will still keep your progress and give audio cues. It works for instant messenger apps too. While you won’t get notifcations or icon updates, you can still hear your new messages and when you go back, there’s no reconnecting. Great! It works while some applications update too. You’ll still have to be aware of what you are running in the background though, so you don’t drain the battery quicker.

The way to use this app is pretty simple. All you have to do is hold down the home button for a few seconds while in an app then Backgrounder is active and it drops you to the home screen. You are then free to enter and exit any app. Once you want the app to close properly, just hold the home button down again while in that app. Simple.

Thanks again jailbreaking community, for doing what Apple refuses to do.

http://code.google.com/p/iphone-backgrounder/wiki/Documentation