FBI seized Applanet.net, Appbucket.net and Snappzmarket.com for hosting pirated Android apps

The US government has shutdown 3 Android apps marketplace websites namely Applanet.net, Appbucket.net and Snappzmarket.com recently.

Those websites are known to host and distribute popular Android apps which are selling with a price in the official Google Play Store and/or Amazon Marketplace, etc.

Actually, most Android apps are selling at a low price, even lower than a cup of Starbucks coffee, and we just need to pay for once to download the apps and able to enjoy all future version updates/upgrades. Even when we changed to a new Android phone, the apps we purchased before will be automatically installed into the new phone.

Smartphone users should build the mentallity of paying for the apps that they find useful, which they like to keep in their phone for their use. Most of the time, the cost of the apps is less than 1% of the cost of their smartphone.

FBI seizure of these 3 piracy marketplaces is a meaningful move to somehow educate the users not to avoid paying for non-free apps. If the mobile developers are well rewarded by producing popular apps, that will encourage more and more fantastic apps to be produced.

Reference: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/376360/20120822/piracy-infringement-android-apps-download-applications.htm

Malaysia national and state public holidays for year 2013 announced

The 2013 national and state public holidays in Malaysia will be as below.

There are 14 days of national holiday, and 1 of them fall on Sunday and 3 fall on Saturday. Most of the states will have around 3 state holidays in addition to the national holidays.

Interesting Android app to display Chinese family relationship terminology 亲戚关系

The Chinese has a very systematic and complex family relationship (a.k.a. kinship) terminology system which maintains a separate designation for almost every one of ego's kin based on their generation, gender, lineage, relative age, etc.

Do you know the Chinese family designation of each and everyone of your relatives? I've found an interesting Android app by chance, which can help you to quickly find out the correct designation. So, no more embarrassment in calling your relatives correctly when you meet with them next time during family gathering, wedding dinner, Chinese New Year visiting, etc.

The app is called My Relatives (亲戚关系) and you can get it from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lanhk.myrelatives.