Top of the Ticket | Sunday shows: Kirk, Kyl, McCarthy, Greenspan | Los Angeles Times

My Perfect Tree

| FREE | Lot finder

Holiday helper apps on your smartphone - latimes.com - Top of the Ticket | Sunday shows: Kirk, Kyl, McCarthy, Greenspan | Los Angeles Times

Ah, there's a bite in the air, the lines are longer at the shopping centers and the shelves seem to have been picked clean. The neighbors' gaudy lights twinkle as if in a synchronized taunt to your bare house. Yes, the last-minute rush is on to prep for the holidays. As always, there's an app or two to help you. (Sorry, not with stringing the lights, though.) Searching for a tree The season has arrived. Hanukkah is here, and Christmas is Sunday. But you're still looking for a tree? Android users can try out one of several free tree-finding apps: , and  . The app locates you and, on a Google map, identifies where some tree lots are located. These all seem to be the same app, down to the font. There are some fairly generic instructions on tree care. We weren't all that impressed with these apps since none of them seemed to include details about some of the tree lots that pop up throughout town. The closest lots listed for, say, Glendale were actually in West Los Angeles, Burbank and Whittier -- certainly far from the closest lots. You might have better luck just looking up from your phone while you drive through the neighborhood. Making a list I'm still looking for an app to wrap my gifts for me. No luck yet. Just keeping gifts straight can be a task for the overprogrammed. Of course, there's always for every device, for free. But if you're looking for something a little more festive, here are a few options. Android users can try the app, available in English and Spanish on Motorola Xoom, Kindle Fire, and Nook Tablet and Color. Each child in the house can create a unique account to make a wish list, prioritize the items and send Read More

Key Ring Reward Cards

| FREE | Mobestream Media

Making shopping more of a snap with your smartphone | Technology | Los Angeles Times - Top of the Ticket | Sunday shows: Kirk, Kyl, McCarthy, Greenspan | Los Angeles Times

Who couldn't use a good bargain these days? We pull out a few free and inexpensive smartphone apps that make shopping a little less of a chore.  Barcode readers     (free for iPhone): Think "red laser" as in the laser in the scanner at the cash register. By tapping the lightning bolt on the screen and steadying the phone's camera over a barcode, you can get details in a flash. If the camera isn't picking up the barcode, you can tap in the digits in the code. You can create wish lists of your scans and e-mail your list. It's a great tool for comparison shopping online -- and offline. There's a "local" feature that looks for your products at nearby locations using the location services of your phone.  On many food items, RedLaser calls up nutritional information. Of course, it doesn't always find what you're looking for, but we've had more hits than misses. (free for Android): This Google app lets you do a voice search and image or barcode search. Same concept, tap and zap. You can share results through many avenues including Bluetooth, e-mail and Twitter. Like RedLaser, this app lets you do comparison shopping online and offline. It also provides reviews when available. You can also use your Android phone to snap the cover of a book, DVD or video game to get details (available in SnapTell for iPhone). The voice-searching works fine, too. But it can be a little less specific. For instance, if you just say "The Lucky Ones," you're likely to get a bunch of results to weed through until you find the one you're really looking for.  (free for Android, iPhone, Nokia and $1.99 for iPhone 2G): It also offers barcode scanning and wish lists like the other two. ShopSavvy also recognizes QR Read More

WolframAlpha Free Mobile Web

| FREE | Wolfram Alpha LLC

Wolfram Alpha recalculates its business [Updated] | Technology | Los Angeles Times - Top of the Ticket | Sunday shows: Kirk, Kyl, McCarthy, Greenspan | Los Angeles Times

Wolfram Alpha, the statistical search engine that launched to curiosity and eventual bafflement in May, now thinks everyone should use it. Google's not a competitor, a spokesman said, but you should still use Wolfram's search instead. Sometimes. Wolfram Research, the Champaign, Ill., company that makes the search engine, appears to still be struggling to overcome an identity crisis that has plagued it for nearly a year. For the company, the question is whether Wolfram Alpha should be positioned as a premium product. Meanwhile, consumers wonder why they should use this instead of Google. The latter question was answered in August when Wolfram Research partnered with Microsoft. For those willing to switch from the almighty Google, Microsoft's Bing displays Wolfram's fact-based, data-rich results in some search results alongside traditional pages culled from the Web. That agreement (and a check from Microsoft) facilitated in a way Wolfram Alpha's move to "ubiquity," as the developer refers to changes it announced Wednesday. The mobile website for Wolfram Alpha has been put back online after it was removed months ago to avoid competing with the $49.99 iPhone application. And that pricey app has dropped to $1.99. People who purchased the app at $49.99 will receive a refund for the difference. Those customers amount to a significant chunk of change. The number of apps sold is "in the neighborhood of 10,000," said Schoeller Porter, Wolfram Alpha architect of developer relations. "It was selling reasonably well," Porter said by phone Thursday. "We were actually very happy with the sales." Wolfram may intimidate the average Web surfer, but it holds a special place in the hearts of many engineers and mathematicians looking for an advanced fact finder or a superpowered calculator. So why ditch the premium model and give back close to half a million dollars? "It's not about abandoning the revenue stream," Porter said. "We really are at Read More