Featured Android Game Review: PAUL the app [Entertainment]

Do you like to watch a lot of videos online? Do you get annoyed with having to use up your mobile data all the time or dealing with buffers? Well I have an app for you, it’s called PAUL the app, and it was developed by Inmobly. PAUL will curate videos and music for you from many popular sites and download them to your phone or tablet via WiFi so that you don’t have to use up mobile data or deal with any hiccups.

Before we get into the particulars, you are probably wondering where the name “PAUL” came from. Paul was an octopus in Germany that became famous for his predictions during the World Cup in 2010. He not only picked Spain as the World Cup champion, he also picked 85% of the matches correctly. What does that have to do with this app? Well PAUL The App’s algorithms are inspired by Paul the octopus with the goal being to successfully deliver videos and music that you want to watch or listen to. In fact, they created an acronym based on PAUL – Predictive Automated User-centric Loading.

Right now you can get videos from YouTube, ESPN ScoreCenter, FoxSports, AlJazeera Sports, CNN, Fox News, Al Arabiya News, Facebook, Twitter, Flixster, and Vevo. You can also get music from SoundCloud and Last.fm. PAUL is a fairly new app so more sources will be added, but 13 is a great start. PAUL will try to figure out what you’re interested in, but he will get a little help from you. For example, in the YouTube channel, you can fine tune things by selecting or deselecting, Recommended Videos (login required), Watch Later Videos (login required), Home Page Videos (login required), Trending Videos, Featured Videos, Most Popular Videos, or Top Rated Videos. For ESPN, you can select particular sports, and for CNN you can select what types of news you’re looking for such as world, politics, and so on. On top of these selections, PAUL will still use its algorithm to deliver videos and music that you want. If you only play certain types of videos, Paul will use this information to give you stuff that interests you. In the future you will be able to add keywords for each individual channel and hashtags for the Twitter channel.

The interface is really simple with large icons for each channel. When you first open the app, you are given the opportunity to select what channels you want to add to your content. For some sites like YouTube, you will be asked for your login. After a few minutes you will start seeing videos appear. There will be a little number within each icon telling you how many videos are available for each channel. Tap on the channel and you will see the list of videos. You can simply play them by tapping them, but you can also delete any that don’t interest you by tapping on the trash can. They also have a share button for each video that will let you share it via email, Dropbox, Drive, Facebook, Google+, and so on. If you want to use the actual app to watch your downloaded videos, they will be visible in their associated app (ie the official YouTube app) assuming you have the VPN option turned on. This option is only available on phones or tablets with a 3G connection.

Right now you have to be thinking about storage space on your device. You can set the storage limit to 500MB, 1GB, 1.5GB, or unlimited. This way you never have to worry about PAUL taking up more space than what you want. As it approaches you preset limit, older videos will automatically be deleted. The best part of all this is the videos will only download via WiFi so you don’t have to worry about using your precious data. You can set it to download via 3G as well, but unless you have an unlimited plan, it shouldn’t be necessary. If battery is a concern, you can even tell PAUL not to download any videos or music once the battery is below a certain point.

PAUL also gives you the opportunity to see what videos will be downloaded over the next couple of days. Unfortunately for now there isn’t much detail to these videos, but if you want to remove any from the queue, you can just tap the “x” icon.

For those of you that love widgets, you will be happy to know that Paul brings you four styles of widgets: Music, Videos, Statistics, or All-In-One. You can open videos or music from any of your chosen channels right from the widget. By the way, the statistics widget will show you how much data you saved by using PAUL.

PAUL the app is absolutely free and is available now in the Play Store. It’s perfect for those of you that are on the go. Check out my hands on video below as well as download links to get started. As always, let me know what you think.

Features:

YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, plus:
Sports highlights from ESPN ScoreCenter, FoxSports, and AlJazeera Sports (JSC)
News clips from CNN, Fox News, and Al Arabiya News
Music from SoundCloud and Last.fm
Movie Trailers from Flixster
Music Videos from VEVO
And No More Annoying Buffering. Watch videos, and rewatch them, anywhere, anytime. Even offline!