Yoga Monkey: Monkey see, monkey do yoga (Review)

Overview

Yoga is good for your physical and mental health. It relieves stress and helps you feel better. However, not everyone has the time, energy, or money to go to a yoga studio. That is where apps like Yoga Monkey come in. These apps make yoga very simple and time-flexible. This one in particular uses a monkey – because Monkey See, Monkey Do, right?

Developer: Guru Inc.

Cost: Free

Impressions

User Interface

Yoga Monkey uses a nice hamburger menu to present the available settings and then tabs to access your coursework. The light yellow used throughout the app is quite attractive and everything is placed in a really fluid experience. The video player for the courses is a bit rudimentary, but it’s still easy to go through the different videos.

In these videos, it shows you everything you’re supposed to be doing. There’s also a voice that explains everything as well. However, the voice doesn’t feel very human, but that does not get in the way of understanding the instructions.

Ad Obtrusiveness

I can’t say that Yoga Monkey’s ads are obtrusive as much as they are just strange. They show up after you pause a video… SOMETIMES. That being said, they don’t interfere with any functions of the video player. As soon as you start your video, the ad disappears.

Features

Yoga Monkey has a lot of things to keep you on track. It has 10 series, ascending by rank. In each series, there are 10 videos that appear in a timeline. Aside from the series, there’s a calendar to help keep you organized. If there’s a desired effect you’re looking for, you can add additional plugins such as weight loss, better sleep, etc.

Conclusion

Yoga monkey is great for all users. It has a good interface with a system that keeps you motivated to do yoga each and every day.

Download and install Yoga Monkey from the Google Play Store.

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Five Android games for getting your word fix in

Enjoy word games? Or do you sometimes need to kill some time with a game that doesn’t require an intense amount of skill or time? I am the type who always has a bunch of word games on my phone – they challenge my brain and are fun at the same time and don’t have a large learning curve. They’re also a ton of fun to play with friends in competition or in tandem mode.

Today’s list of apps are here to help you sort through the thousands of word games available in the Google Play Store. And since it is Friday, you can try some of them out this weekend while you relax and enjoy your time away from work.

This week: Android games for getting your word fix in

Words with Friends

Words with Friends is the world’s most popular word game app you can get today. So there’s a good chance you have played it, but if for some reason you have stopped, today is a good day to download it again. Words with Friends challenges your word building skills by giving you seven random letters that you assemble on a game board with point multipliers. You can play in solo mode, random mode, or select who you want to play if you know their username.

The developers of Words with Friends are constantly adding new features and it is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and British English.

You can play random people or you can play friends you know anywhere in the world. If you want an easy win, feel free to challenge me directly. My username is pandab55 and love a good challenge. Just don’t cheat! If you do happen to challenge me it is a great way to chat with me about anything related to Android too using the Words with Friends chat tool.

Google Play Store – LINK

.Word Fever.

One of my new favorite games is Word Fever. It’s not too often you come across a fun game that is also ad-free, and this one is both.

Word Fever is part crossword, part word search game. Use the clues to figure out what the hidden words are. The answers can be about nature, food, science, sports, vacation, geography and many other categories.

It starts very easy but gets challenging quickly. Find the twisted words and slide your finger over the letters – as easy as that! If you like to play brain teasers, charades, text twist, quiz and word puzzles, this one is for you.

Google Play Store – LINK

Word Streak With Friends

 Another fun game from Zygna is Word Streak with Friends. This game is a little more fast paced as you need to find and select as many words as humanly possible in a limited amount of time.

You’re given a 4×4 grid of random letters where you must connect letters to make new words. The longer the word the more points you get. You can play solo, tournament mode, head to head, or enter the daily challenge. The app does cost $1.99 but is worth every penny. It’s highly addictive so be careful if you’re worried about having too much fun.

Google Play Store – LINK

Word Search

Rather than creating words, Word Search is a mashup of letters with hidden words that you need to find vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. You’re given a list of words to find at the bottom of the app and all you have to do is simply find them in the grid. It’s a fun game to kill time while also challenging your brain to look for words in odd directions. One of my favorite features is that you can play this game with no time restraints. Pick up when you have time and leave it when you’re busy. It will always be waiting for you to find your next word.

Google Play Store – LINK

What Restaurant ?

What Restaurant? is a lot of fun because it brings your knowledge of restaurants into play with creating words. It gives you an image of a logo from a restaurant like McDonald’s, and below is a grid of letters to pick from and you need to know how to spell the name correctly in order to advance to the next level. The game starts off easy but gets a little harder with each stage.

Google Play Store – LINK

Your turn!

What’s your favorite Android for traveling on a budget or saving a few bucks when out and about? Is it one of the five we picked?  What do you like most about it?  Leave a comment below and share with the class!

Why Stop Now?

Have you checked out our previous Five for Friday categories?  Here’s some of the most recent selection!

• Android apps for traveling on a budget
• Apps for fans of Pinterest
• Apps for tracking your run and workout

The Turtle Beach Elite Pro headset is every gamer’s dream (Review)

If you’ve ever searched for a gaming headset, you probably know who Turtle Beach is. Along with Astro, Turtle Beach is one of the most well-respected names out there because of the quality of products it brings to the market. With the ever-expanding area of competitive gaming continuing to explode, Turtle Beach decided to give gamers an option. The new Elite Pro headset for Xbox One, PS4, and PC is a simple formula: pro-gamer gear at consumer level prices.

Build and Feel

The first thing you’ll notice when taking the Elite Pro headset out of the box is how solid it feels. It feels like a product that’s been well made with strong materials that will last forever. But, what may throw you off is how light the headset is. Turtle Beach rebuilt this headset from the ground up to ensure that it was light enough for long gaming sessions. I normally wear the headset while I’m at my computer for either gaming or writing and these periods can last upwards of eight hours with only small breaks. I honestly sometimes forget I even have a headset on because it’s so light.

The earcups were also a huge area of focus for Turtle Beach with the Elite Pro. The 50mm “nanoclear” speakers sit behind earcups made of spandex, leather, and gel infused memory foam. I honestly can’t believe how comfortable they are on my ears. The soft materials don’t irritate my skin even though they extend past my ears and sit on top of my beard which is an issue I’ve had with multiple headsets in the past. Turtle Beach really tried to make sure that your ears wouldn’t sweat with these on and, for the most part, it does a good job but near hour three or four, I do get a bit of moisture going on. It’s just natural for your body to do that and even though Turtle Beach does admirably, its fighting nature.

Of special note on the ear cups is the “ProSpecs” system which is just an indent into the cups so those of you with glasses can wear them comfortably with the headset. It’s not immediately clear where this mark is just by looking at the headset, but once you slip on your glasses you’ll find a little notch cut out in the foam. I tested this out with my sunglasses to positive results. Even though there is a slight notch in the foam, the cups still maintain solid suction to your head so ambient noise isn’t getting in.

The ability to wear glasses and your headset comfortably is something that will please many players with less than perfect sight. Turtle Beach did excellently here.

Turtle Beach also added in a tension adjustment system to the top of the headset. The top bar can be adjusted to as tight or as loose as you would like it to be. This is great in combination with the standard height adjuster you find on the sides of the Elite Pro. I’ve dealt with headsets in the past that squeeze my head or just fall off because I can’t get the tension right. This allows a perfect fit. I do appreciate that the tension adjusters don’t slip out of place while you’re using the headset, but they can be a bit hard to adjust unless you actually take the headset off. Perhaps a notch system in a later revision of the headset would be welcome, but the tension system is still a huge positive.

T.A.C.

The T.A.C. or Tactical Audio Controller is an optional accessory to the Elite Pro headset that will take your ability to control exactly what goes into and what comes out of your headset to another level. There are sliders for a game/chat mix, a background noise limiter, an outbound mic boost and a mic monitor level. Let’s take a look at what each of these sliders control.

The game/chat slider lets you favor members of your party or game sounds. If you’re playing with someone who’s mic just isn’t great or who sits far away from the audio source, this is wonderful to have because you can adjust exactly how loud that person is going to be in your ear relative to game sounds. If their audio is low, favor the chat on the mixer and turn up the overall sound. It’s perfect and I adjust it all the time based on who I’m playing with.

The background noise limiter is perfect for those of us with kids. My daughter likes to run around screaming and that’s not necessarily what my teammates want to hear while we’re raiding. Rather than mute my mic completely, I can adjust the sensitivity of the noise gate with this slider so that it only allows my voice to go through. Very handy.

The outbound mic boost is fairly self-explanatory. If you’re quiet, or loud, this will control what is coming out of the headset. This is a great feature for anyone playing games late at night while others sleep. Before the writing of this article, I was able to play after my wife went to bed in the next room whereas normally I’d have to keep my mic muted and my mouth shut, no matter how many times I was killed.

The mic monitor level allows you to set exactly how much of yourself you can hear in your headset. If you like to hear yourself, like I do, I set this rather high. I’m a television director in my other life and because of how our headsets are set up, I always hear myself speak. It’s something I’ve gotten used to and using headsets that don’t have mic monitoring always feel like something is missing. Once you’re used to hearing yourself in your headset, it’s hard to let go of.

On the back of the T.A.C. are many ports but I want to focus on two: The Aux in and ethernet ports.

The Aux port allows you to plug in your phone so you can take calls and mix in music during your gameplay sessions. I normally use a Turtle Beach 800X headset and the main selling point for this wireless headset was the inclusion of Bluetooth. I keep my phone connected to the headset with Bluetooth because I like to listen more than game sounds and I need to hear my phone ring when my wife calls and I’m playing. While the Elite Pro doesn’t have Bluetooth, it does have these features through the inclusion of the Aux port.

If you’re taking your Elite Pro and T.A.C. on the go to a LAN party, the ethernet port is going to be a killer feature for you. Other competing headset makers let you daisy-chain your mixamps together for team chat during LAN parties or competitions and the T.A.C. for the Elite Pro lets you do just that too. Connecting an ethernet cable between your T.A.C.’s creates a lag free voice chat party. The only issue being that if your clanmates have other headsets, this won’t work for you.

Noise-cancelling Microphone

The Elite Pro comes with a standard detachable boom microphone in the box, but you can also grab the noise-cancelling microphone as an add-on. I subjected my clanmates to many tests back and forth between the default boom mic and the noise-cancelling mic. There is a difference in audio quality and background noise, but it isn’t game breaking.

If you play in a loud or crowded area, I’d definitely suggest picking one of these up, but if you’re playing in a quiet area like your man-cave on the weekends, this may be a pass. It’s a great accessory that does it’s job wonderfully, but not everyone will need it.

Sound

One of the biggest reasons to get a headset is the hear the game world around you. Turtle Beach has always been widely regarded as a company that puts out some of the best sounding headsets around and the Elite Pro is no exception, in fact, it may be the best sounding headset on the market.

If you’re skipping the T.A.C., you’re plugging directly into your controller and getting stereo audio. There is a significant boost in audio quality with this headset over using television speakers or a home surround system. Even without the T.A.C., I can hear footsteps all around me. I know what’s coming and that’s a huge advantage.

When you add in the T.A.C., it’s almost unfair to other players. The T.A.C. gives you 7.1 surround sound that lets you pinpoint exactly where an enemy is sneaking up on you from. There are also four presets to switch you in between game mode, movie mode, music mode and turning the surround off. In game mode, you can choose between Signature Sound, Shooter, Superhuman Hearing and Footstep Focus. Movie mode keeps Signature Sound as your first option and gives you Action, Horror, and Drama settings as well. Music Mode also starts with Signature Sound and adds in Stadium, Acoustic, and Dance modes as well. When you turn the Surround Sound off, you can select between Natural Sound focus, Bass Boost, Bass and Treble Booster and Vocal Booster modes. With these 16 choices, you’re going to find something for every occasion to make the audio coming into your headset sound perfect.

Mobile Applications

So, this is an Android website. How exactly can you use this with your Android device? The answer is, much like any other headset with a 3.5mm jack. The headset comes with a standard 3.5mm adapter to connect your headset to your controller and that works for phones too. Plugging this into your phone is amazing for long conference calls or a long conversation with family. You sound excellent by using the boom microphone, the headset is very light so you can wear it for long periods and it opens up your hands to continue on with whatever you were doing previously. As I mentioned earlier, if you pick up the T.A.C., you can already have your phone plugged in and answer calls while you continue to play.

There aren’t a ton of games on Android where you would need a headset, but for the few that are out there, this can’t hurt. It’s an ultra sensitive headset that puts out the best possible sound.

Conclusion

Turtle Beach really has a winner on its hands here. I hope it catches on in the gaming community because I’d love to see more prosumer products like this one. The audio isn’t unmatched in the market, but it’s among the leaders and it does an excellent job in-game of informing you of what’s going on around you. Even just using the Elite Pro to listen to music is an awesome experience. I love kicking on the bass boost and scrolling through Monstercat’s extensive library.

I can’t overstate how comfortable this headset actually is. Sure, you’re going to see plenty of marketing material that makes it seem amazing, but in real life situations, it really holds up. After numerous hours, the pads still feel comfortable on the sides of my head and due to the fact it’s so light, I have zero neck fatigue.

If you’re interested in grabbing the Turtle Beach Elite Pro headset, you can grab it for $199 from Best Buy, Gamestop, or Amazon. It’s compatible with Xbox One, PS4, PC and pretty much anything with an aux jack.