How To Track shipment from multiple couriers with single app

Track shipment from multiple couriers with single app

When you are expecting a delivery from any courier or postal service, one of the biggest challenges you probably face is to properly track your shipment. Some courier services do provide you with a tracking ID, but generally, you need to manually check the status of your shipment. Unless the service has ties with a major e-commerce company, it is usually unlikely that you’ll find a dedicated tracking service that automatically keeps you updated with shipment status changes. Some services do provide mobile apps to give you push notifications for shipment status. But then again, if you usually receive frequent packages from multiple services, you’ll need to install individual apps for each of them. Also, most courier services don’t even have mobile apps.

What if a single app could provide integrated push notifications for all of your shipment status updates across multiple courier services from around the world. In fact, there are a few apps that already allow you to do so. In this article, we’ll explore some of these apps.

Aftership

Aftership supports more than 235 postal and courier services from around the world and lets you track the status of your packages being handled by any of the supported services. Once you provide a valid tracking number for your shipment, it will automatically detect the courier name and fetch other details such as item to ship, shipping history, current status of shipment, etc. You can manually select the courier service name in case it is wrongly detected. Tracking ID can also be scanned using a built-in barcode scanner. It also gives push notification every time the status of shipment changes – Info Received, In Transit, Out for Delivery, Delivered, Failed Attempt, and any other delivery alerts from the courier service. In addition, the app also saves all your tracked shipments in case you want to refer to it at a later time. Supported couriers include FedEx, UPS Mail, USPS, DHL, Blue Dart, DTDC and many more popular services worldwide. Aftership is freely available on the App Store (iOS) and Android (Google Play).

Parcel

Parcel is another package shipment tracking app similar to Aftership which supports more than 240 courier and postal delivery services worldwide, including services like Royal Mail, HDNL, UK Mail, Yodel, Deutsche Post, TNT, UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc. Tracking data is collected in the server and pushed to the app, so that you get all your shipment notifications directly on your device. Like Aftership, it can automatically detect the courier name from the tracking number and can provide push notifications for changes in shipment status. Additionally, the delivery of package can also be viewed on a map. Parcel is available for free on the Mac and iOS App Stores, but this version only allows you to track up to three simultaneous shipments and does not provide push notifications. To unlock these features, you need to upgrade to the Pro version.

Slice

Slice is a great app for keeping track of all your online purchases. Though its shipment tracking capabilities are limited, with support for only a limited number of courier and delivery services, it’s actually more useful as a one stop destination for managing everything you buy and sell on the Internet. To use Slice, you need to register for an account and link your email address to it. Once linked, Slice scans your email for all your online purchase receipts and organizes them in various views, giving you detailed stats on your overall purchase trends. You can also track shipments from a limited number of popular delivery services including DHL, FedEx, UPS, USPS, Prestige, OnTrac, etc. Slice is available as a web based app, and is also available for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

How To Custom Equalizer on iOS, Android and Windows Phone

Custom Equalizer on iOS, Android and Windows Phone

Custom Equalizer on iOS, Android and Windows Phone

Smartphones serves as the primary media device for many people, ever since the iPhone. And if you are especially crazy about music, you might be looking for advanced music controls in your music player app, such as equalizer.

Equalizer on your phone helps to alter its audio output according to your preference. Generally, a set of predefined equalizer settings (a.k.a presets) just do the work. But advanced users often prefer to use custom equalizer settings to fine tune the output. These custom settings give control over different audio frequency bands. More the number of bands available in an equalizer, better the control over sound output.

In this article, we’ll explore the various ways of enabling equalizer controls on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

Note: The impact of equalizer on sound output is significant when playing music through a pair of good quality headphones or speakers, capable of providing sound output over a wide frequency range.

Equalizer on iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch)

iOS provides a host of equalizer presets under the Settings menu. These presets are a good way to modify sound output by music genre. To change the current equalizer setting on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, open the Settings app, head to Music and choose EQ under playback section. Here, you can select any one from a set of over 20 different presets.

But if you’re not satisfied with the available presets, there are third party music players available on the App Store that provide custom equalizer controls. Most of these apps (which offer up to 10-band equalization) are paid ones, but there are a few (usually 5-band equalizers) that are available for free.

Equalizer+ (Free)

Equalizer+ is a free audio player for iOS that has a 5-band equalizer built into it. The app can access the iOS Music Library so that you can play songs stored locally on your iPhone. The app allows you to configure custom equalizer settings for your songs, and save them as presets. The app includes a bass booster setting to amplify the low frequency sounds. In addition to custom equalizer settings, the app provides 10 different equalizer presets based on different music genres – Acoustic, Classical, Dance, Electro, Flat, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Pop, R&B and Rock.

The app is available for free on the App Store, although it includes in-app purchases to unlock extra features such as Bass Boost, Visualizer, Preset Saver, etc. However, there is no option to increase the number of configurable equalizer bands. If you want an equalizer app with more customizable equalizer bands, you may want to try the other alternative apps mentioned below.

n7player (Free / Paid)

n7player is another third party music player app for iOS with a lot of customizable options. The app includes a 10 band equalizer (with Pre-amp) to tune and enhance your music listening experience. There are a number of equalizer presets available, but the app also allows you to save your own custom ones. Separate bass and treble controls are also available to help you boost the respective outputs.

n7player is available for free on the App Store, but in order to unlock the 10-band equalizer, you need to upgrade the app via in-app purchase.

Musify Player (Paid)

Musify is a paid music player app for iOS with a built-in 10-band equalizer and bass booster. With only a $0.99 price, it is one of the cheapest music apps which includes a 10 band equalizer. It can access and play songs from the iOS Music Library, but it can also stream free legal music from services like SoundCloud and Jamendo. It includes over 20 equalizer presets and provides the option to save custom presets.

Equalizer (Paid)

The app claims to be the “Music player with the most powerful and accurate equalizer in the App Store”. Equalizer provides a powerful parametric equalizer to control sound output with 7 control points or lets you directly enter values for each frequency band. There are even separate equalizer controls for left and right audio channels. The Pre-amp allows you to control the overall boost, while the control points helps you to set the level across 7 different frequency bands. The app also lets you to choose from more than 10 equalizer presets, and even save your own. The app is available on the App Store for $2.99.

Equalizer on Android

Equalizer settings on Android can be customized natively from the Settings app. Depending on the version of Android your device is running, the location of equalizer settings are slightly different, but it is usually found under the Sound section. You can perform a web search to find out the exact location of equalizer settings on your Android device.

The default equalizer on Android provides 5-band equalization with a limited number of presets and a bass boost option. For better sound enhancement with more than 5 customizable EQ bands, you can try third party music player apps such as Rocket Player, PowerAmp, n7player, etc.

Equalizer on Windows Phone

Just like Android, Windows Phone also has a built in 7-band equalizer, which can be found under Settings >> Audio on supported devices. In addition to custom equalizer, there are more than 15 presets to choose from depending on the genre of music being played.

The support for equalizer primarily depends on the firmware version running on your Windows Phone device. Usually, the high end Windows Phone devices (such as the Lumia 930 or Lumia 1530) have the equalizer settings enabled since launch, whereas some others (such as the Lumia 630/635) only got the feature enabled after the latest Lumia Denim firmware update.

We didn’t find any decent apps with equalizer on the Windows Phone Store yet. But according to a tweet from one of the developers of VLC for Windows Phone, the app might introduce equalizer support in a future update. We’ll update this article when the update is available, so stay tuned.

If you know of any decent app for iOS, Android or Windows Phone with equalizer support that we didn’t mention in this article, tell us about it in the comments below.

How To Send a message to yourself on WhatsApp

Send a message to yourself on WhatsApp

Sometimes, you might want to use a chat conversation for personal use, for example, taking notes, bookmarking Internet URLs, saving attachments, maintaining to-do lists, etc. And what better way to do this than to create a chat thread for yourself. WhatsApp stores messages and attachments on the user’s device, rather than the server. Moreover, it recently started supporting all types of attachments, hence making it an ideal app for the above purpose.

But how do you send a message to yourself on WhatsApp? Previously, it was possible to create a WhatsApp chat by picking your own contact from the Favorites tab/Contacts tab. But WhatsApp has since replaced the Favorites tab/Contacts tab with the Status tab, and it is no longer possible to send a message to yourself, unless you have another phone number, also registered on WhatsApp.

In this article, we’re going to explore a workaround that allows you to create a WhatsApp conversation thread with your own number.

If you follow our blog, you might already be aware of our web app called WhatsApp Direct, which allows you to send WhatsApp messages to any phone number without saving it to your contacts. And the same app may in fact be used to send a WhatsApp message to your own number.

The below steps will guide you to send a WhatsApp message to your own number, and create a personal chat thread that you can use for bookmarking or reference purposes.

1. Open WhatsApp Direct on your smartphone.
2. Select the appropriate country code from the dropdown. Your selected code will be remembered by the app for future usage.
3. Enter your registered WhatsApp phone number and a test message to initiate the chat.
4. You will be redirected to a new WhatsApp chat with your phone number on it.

Now that your personal chat thread has been created, it will remain on your chat list, even if you close the app. Whenever you want to bookmark a URL or attachment, or refer back to a text at a later time, just send it as a message in your personal thread.

And that’s it, you can continue using the chat thread just as any other WhatsApp conversation, as long as you don’t delete it, or uninstall WhatsApp without having a chat backup.

Note: WhatsApp Direct works on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone devices.

Did you like this little trick to send WhatsApp messages to your own number? Let us know in the comments below.

Disclosure: WhatsApp Direct is a home-brewed app created at 7labs for the benefit of all our readers. As such, we built this app keeping the privacy of our readers in mind. Any information that is shared on WhatsApp Direct (phone numbers, messages, etc.), is sent directly to WhatsApp using their APIs. We do not store this information, nor do we forward this to other third parties.