Android Apps?

Okay, I'm feeling left out over on the iPhone Apps thread, so here's one for us cool kids.

• RealCalc: An HP10 (albeit portrait mode) feelalike calculator.
• Arity: a 2D and 3D graphing calculator
• ShopSavvy: Scan product (UPC, mostly) barcodes with your camera, look up product, and find prices online and in nearby stores
• Barcode Scanner: ShopSavvy is nice, but it only supports a few types of barcodes. Barcode Scanner can read everything I've thrown at it so far, except non-QR 2D bar codes. It also provides a barcode scanner and generator library for other applications.
• deciBel: an SPL meter. You have to calibrate it, since it doesn't know the response of the mikes in different devices, but it's pretty neat to have a somewhat accurate SPL meter in your pocket
• RTA Audio Analyzer: an audio frequency analyzer
• DinoDyno!: accelerometer-based auto performance analyzer. Worst possible app icon
• Bubble: turns your phone into a bubble level. Graphics show actual bubble, making it intuitive, plus shows angle in degrees and contractor-style rise-over-run. Works on all four edges, plus the back, where it shows a bullseye spirit level.
• Google Sky Map: a star map. You say "so what". I say "point it at the star you want to identify and it shows you the map where it's pointing. I don't really have a lot of use for this, but it's super-neat.
• Shazam: Neatest application for any portable device. Tells you what song is being played.
• IRC Radio: an IRC app that's reasonably good on its own, but ups the ante by optionally piping the content through text-to-speech.
• ConnectBot: the obligatory SSH app. Also does telnet and provides an interface to the local shell. (Telnet doesn't work for raw connections, sadly, so no telnetting to port 25 to test SMTP.) Supports public key authentication and has a good interface for Ctrl characters and Esc.
• gStrings: chromatic tuner, as for tuning a musical instrument
• Sudoku Camera: take a picture of a printed Sudoku puzzle and have it import it into a Sudoku application. You generally have to make manual corrections, but it makes that pretty easy, by showing you the picture underneath the generated numbers. Trial only, but for Sudoku addicts, pretty darned neat.
  And since we're talking Sudoku, here are the apps that Sudoku camera will work with:
  • Andoku: Nice attractive sudoku (and sudoku extensions) app, but has no support for notes.
  • OpenSudoku: Only plain-flavored Sudoku, and a marginal UI, but support notes.
• Crosswords: Good crossword UI, supports .puz files, but no built-in downloader (or built-in puzzles, for that matter).
• Abduction!: Save your animal brethren from the space aliens by bouncing up platforms. Super-simple, super-fun vertical platformer, controlled by tilting.
• Radiant Lite: a Xevious-like arcade game with neat retro graphics. Just a demo, but a very long demo.
• Robo Defense: decent tower defense game
• DailyStrip: viewer for online comics, including xkcd. SHould support notifications, but doesn't.
• What the Doodle?: online Pictionary. Fun until you get retards drawing genitals or just writing the phrase they're supposed to draw. There is cheater voting, but some people seem to think that it's okay. It's probably better when amongst people who paid.
• App Referer: show QD codes for apps on your system so that another person can scan them to download the app quickly. Relies on Barcode Reader.
• Calorie Counter: interface to FatSecret.com. Keep track of your daily food intake. Uses FatSecret's food database, plus lets you scan the barcodes of packaged foods. I'm sure there are others just as good; this is just the one I stumbled across.
• CIDR Calculator: for network admins with bad memories, like me. Calculates netmask info.
• DealDroid: checks woot and woot-like web sites and notifies you of current deals.
• PackRat: media database. Scan the barcodes of your CDs, DVDs, video games, books, etc. and import them into the database
• Alice: notifications of your favorite music acts playing in your area.
• Astrid: task manager. Syncs with Remember the Milk
• Ultrachron Lite: nice stopwatch/timer app that will read out a countdown and other times.
• Weatherbug: weather forecasts. keeps the temp and other basic weather info in the notification area. Will track your location. Includes widgets. (By the way, other than the data itself, the The Weather Channel app sucks.)

and last, but certainly not least:

• David Lee Roth Soundboard: I can't improve on this Market comment: "The greatest application ever made. I suggest using one of these as your notification sound. It will change your life."

I'm curious if you've reviewed (or had the need for) some file transfer apps.

I've heard of SwiFTP and AndFTP. Seems like some fairly useful things to have on board, but I have no other impressions.

Yeah, I have.

The two file transfer clients I've tried are AndFTP and DroidFTP. I deleted AndFTP, but don't take that as much praise for DroidFTP. Regular FTP connects, but simply doesn't work with all FTP servers. SFTP (that is, ssh's file transfer protocol) seems to work fine. The user interface is … marginal. AndFTP also supports FTPS (that is, Regular FTP tunneled via SSL/TLS) but also fails on some FTP servers, and it supports ssh key authentication, but only DSA keys, for some reason. I don't remember why I liked DroidFTP better; the UI was probably less irritating.

SwiFTP is actually an FTP server, but is what I used to transfer several GB of data off of a microSD card I didn't have any other adapter for. I was surprised to note that it barely used any battery during the few hours of transferring.

I'm too lazy to do fancy QR codes like that, but here's a brief list to add to some of the excellent ones you've listed.

Swype (You'll have to search for it. Not on the market)

http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/

imgur

Grooveshark

Qik

reddit is fun

USAA

Puzzles (Simon Tatham's Puzzles ported to Android)

Great list, Bitt, and there's one or two I hadn't heard of before that I'd like to check out.

Lets see if I have some additions, and I have more to say about some that you posted:

APPS

Amazon - I love Amazon, and I use their app to browse and order things with my Prime account all the time

Doggcatcher - still pretty much my favorite app. a podcatcher. Google Listen is awful compared to this one, which has more features than you can shake a stick at. Plus, this is one of the best developers around, one who listens to his users and implements features they request.

Email to Self - I knew I would use this extremely simple app so often that I didn't mind paying for it. All I use it for is to be able to put an icon on my home screen which, when pressed, does nothing but open a new GMail compose window with my own address in the To: field and the cursor in the subject. I use it constantly to send reminders to myself. I'm actually quite surprised that this isn't built into Android, like shortcuts to calling or texting are. Guess Google, like everyone else in the mobile space, is obsessed with texting and completely forgot email...

Filer - file manager. great for cleaning off my SD card of the cruft that various apps deposit and don't clean off when I uninstall them.

Foursquare - yup, for some reason I find it fun, even though the app/idea is pretty pitiful if you don't live in a major city.

Greed - I seldom use it, but if I'm waiting around somewhere and really want to check the feeds in my Google Reader account, this is the best app for it (not, God forbid, the mobile Reader website, which is abysmal). Props to this developer for not requiring a login, which sketches me out in other apps.

gTasks - not on the market (if you're interested, let me know). ties in (without credentials required) to my Google Tasks list. Pretty much the only thing that makes Google Tasks useful.

Key Ring - keep meaning to use this more. lets you put all your membership cards (ones with barcodes) in your phone, so you can use your phone on the scanner instead of carrying all those cards in your wallet.

Movies - easily the absolute best app for movie showtimes. loads the times in-app instead of opening a damn browser (I hate apps that load the browser). There are at least three apps simply called "Movies," but look for the one with the popcorn icon, possibly with a blue background.

OI Shopping List - if I don't use this app when I go to the grocery store, I will forget something. If I go to the store with a paper list, I tend to forget at least one thing. With this app, I can check off items I've found so I know I got it. For example, I'll hit the produce section, checking off items as I put them in the cart. Once I'm done in produce, I'll hit "clear completed," and all I see on my list now are items I still have left to get. Extremely useful. This is one of my favorite apps lately

Pandora - of course

Quick Uninstaller - going through the app market or settings to uninstall is annoying, and this has a bunch of features that I haven't even used yet, like backing apps up to SD (though I'm not sure how well that works)

Quickpedia - so far, this is the simplest, fastest, and best laid-out Wikipedia app I've found for Android, and as of a couple months ago I'd tried all of them (about 5 that I could find). The one problem is that for some unknown reason, development on this app seems to have stopped at least 10 months ago. As a result, it seems like every 5th time I try to launch the app, it force closes. Argh. Still, I reference it ALL the time.

Weatherbug - it kills me to recommend a Weatherbug product, as I'm used to their desktop software being filled with spy/adware (though perhaps it isn't anymore), but they do have the best weather app for Android. The Weather Channel one blows.


GAMES

Bonsai Blast - basically Zuma, but there's things I like about it more than PopCap's original. I was skeptical if the concept could work with the inaccuracies of a touch screen phone, but it does!

Radiant - like Bitt mentioned, a top-down space shooter. Easily one of my favorite Android games. The full version of the game is quite long, a great bang for your buck. Plus, since I first bought it, they've released about a dozen updates, including one that nearly doubled the length of the game. A good developer.

Robo Defense - FUN tower defense game. Gets a tad repetitive a little later on, especially if you realize that the game is easy if you:

Wixel - essentially single-player Boggle. Hey, word games are fun I hate that Bookworm isn't on Android.

(My N1 arrived yesterday, finally!)

• Hullomail - Set a divert to have Hullomail collect your Voicemail and Missed Calls. Hullomail will then email notifications to you with MP3s. Google Account integration, so if Bob leaves me a Voicemail, I get an email from Bob with his message attached. Works in the UK and US. Android, iPhone and Blackberry "visual voicemail apps".
• Friction Mobile - Simple but highly addictive game
• Scrambled Net - Port of KNetwalk to Android. Fun in 'Master' mode.
• Skype Lite - Despite the poor reviews, I like to use my free minutes to call abroad with ease for cheap/free and it works well for me.
• SMS Backup - Saves incoming SMS Messages to GMail as read archived messages with an SMS Label. Nice.
• Squeezecontrol - Simple, fast and easy to use Squeezebox Remote.
• Trap! - Classic trap-the-ball game well executed.

I don't suppose Google Voice works on your side of the pond?

Yes, in addition to all you just mentioned, Google Voice also converts the speech to text and includes that in the text message or email. Quite handy that.

Sein, if you use Skype, definitely check out Fring. I only use the Skype part of it and it works great for making Skype calls and sending Skype messages.

My list:

Advanced Task Killer Free - Does what it sounds like
Amazon - Everyone's favorite retailer. I use it to purchase MP3's and download directly onto the phone (only over wifi).
AP Mobile - Headlines at a glance
Battery Widget - not only indicates battery level, but allows you to easily enable or disable bluetooth, wifi and GPS from home screen
Better Terminal Emulator Pro - Lets me do geekery on my rooted Droid
fring - Skype client (also several other messaging/VOIP services)
Google Translate - For talking to Hispanic folks when I move to Belize
TTS Service Extended - required for Google Translate
GDocs Notepad with Sync - Allows you to take Memos and then syncs it up to Google Docs
DroidLight - use your camera flash as a flash light. Much better than those screen lights that just turn your screen white and turn up the brightness.
wpToGo - Post to my blog when I'm on the go
gTasks - create task lists and sync with google tasks
Enjoy Daily Sudoku - Only one I've tried, but I like it a lot.
Fandango - Movie info
GeoBeagle - Best geocaching app I've found until they release the official one. Searches for caches using location and download directly into phone. Then use gps to find, then log your find via SMS
Goggles - Augmented reality from Google. Not terribly useful yet, but I can see where it will be as the dataset increases over time
Google Sky Map - As bit mentioned, find your favorite star
Google Voice - Handles all my voicemail. Also set up to automatically redirect any international calls through google voice. I use that a lot.
Grocery King - Shopping app with the worst UI ever
Klondike Solitaire - A really nice solitaire game with a couple of issues yet to work out. Still fun.
Live Scores - Scores for my favorite leagues.
My Maps Editor by Google - what it sounds like
NIV-BibleReader - #1 best seller of all time - doesn't require wifi...stored in the phone
Pandora - radio. blah blah blah you know the drill
PdaNet - Tether without paying an extra $60/mo. I can deal with that.
Pkt Auctions eBay - eBay client
RedBoxer - Uses location services to find your nearest RedBox. Allows you to reserve a movie so the idiot in front of you doesn't get it.
Remember the Milk - Another list-maker that syncs online. Not sure whether I'll end up using this or gTasks.
Ringdroid - Never used it, but you can supposedly make your own ringtones
Shazam - identify that song that you like
SnapTell - identify random objects with your camera or barcode reader. Very cool
TV.com - watch full streaming episodes of TV shows.

A note about the list applications: I'm trying to find one that is really simple and really good. When in Belize, I'll only be going to the city about every other week, and when I go, there's a million things to remember. If you forget, you're screwed or you make a 3-4 hour round trip the next day to get what you forgot. Any suggestions for good list apps would be great.
Has to handle multiple lists and sync online.

Cool, thanks John.

Also, since you use WpToGo have a look at the official Wordpress app released last week. Quite slick.

I use Remember The Milk on my phone and its quite excellent. Good options and great widgets. I'd recommend it if you don't mind paying the RTM subscription.

Btw, Happy Birthday!

Re: gTasks/RTM: check out Astrid I QR'd to in the OP. I'm not a power user, but folks seem to like it a lot.

They can DO that?

I wouldn't think a laser scanner would be able to read the screen of a phone.

The Fandango people were talking about doing something like that for their ticketing app on the phone, which, if it works, would be just fantastic. I just didn't think it could be done.

Sure. There's a couple airlines that already offer e-tickets this way. They just scan the phone.

I mentioned one in my post. Look for what I said about OI Shopping List. I use it all the time. And happy birthday!


Apparently. They have plenty of tips on how to maximize the chances that the scanner will read the screen, like keep the screen dim and hold it a certain distance from the scanner.

I suspect the scanners in the airport are tweaked to read a phone screen, whereas the ones at the grocery store are set up for paper, but will work with the phone if you adjust the phone to work within its range.

I'm hypothetically getting my new Droid X tomorrow morning. If any of you Android people have revised app recommendations, I'm all ears. Meanwhile, I've been spending the past hour polishing my contacts in Gmail, merging duplicates, etc., so hopefully I'll have a clean contact list in my new phone.

And, for that matter, what's the preferred solution for getting audio and video onto an Android device and then playing it? DoubleTwist?

Locale

Timerriffic


Tasker

I haven't checked it lately, but mixZing get some good reviews.

Stig

I thought MixZing was pretty good, but I uninstalled it because my G1 couldn't handle it...or pretty much any app

DoubleTwist is the closest you'll get to an iPhone/iTunes setup, though, for what that's worth

I don't think I have many new apps to recommend. Many of the recent ones I've installed are ones that were finally added to Android after being on the iPhone for so long, like the IMDb app.

Here's a list of the apps I use the most frequently:

Doggcatcher - I've gone back to using this for podcasts instead of my Zune HD because I can download new episodes anywhere on my phone, and it just handles podcasts better. Probably my most-used and favorite app.

Email to Self - this app is my memory. I use this app so often that now, in five seconds, I can turn on my phone, unlock it, launch this app, write a two-word reminder to myself, send it, and turn my phone off. Later I'll be at my computer and have a message from myself in my inbox (that I've filtered to mark as read) reminding me to do something. I use this app constantly while I'm out, as often as 10 times a day.

Swype - the other reason I've become so fast with the Email to Self app is that I have Swype on my phone. I'm still getting proficient with it, and it's still in beta, but I already really dig it. There are a few annoyances to get over, but it's a great replacement keyboard.

Amazon - the most dangerous app on my phone

OI Shopping List - I still use this every single time I go to the grocery store. Every time I don't, I end up hearing the following from my wife: "uh, sweetie, did you get the ____?"

Voice - the Google Voice app. It's my voicemail and my text messaging (the little text messaging that I do) all in one. One of the most killer features of Android phones.

Twitter - the official client is by far the most attractive of the many Twitter clients. I'm still uncertain of Twitter's place in my life, but I've found it useful for communicating with a few companies that have decided the only place they'll do customer support is Twitter (which is dumb)

Games: Bonsai Blast (like Zuma), Radiant (top-down flying shooter), Wixel (make words from random letters), Air Control (land planes - not as full as the iPhone version, unfortunately, and definitely not like the iPad version), SNESoid (SNES emulator - works flawlessly and without rooting your phone, but I just hate controlling these games with a touch screen).

MyTracks - I can't believe I haven't mentioned this app in this thread yet! MyTracks is incredible! When I go out walking, I just turn this on and go. Then when I'm done, I stop it, and I have a map of my route! I can then export that route to My Maps or a Google Docs spreadsheet.

DC Metro Transit Info - clearly only useful if you live in DC and take the Metro, but it'll tell you when trains are arriving at various stations.

Movies - download the app with the blue background and the bucket of popcorn. It's easily the best app for movie showtimes. I've even purchased tickets in advance through it.

Urbanspoon - great for finding nearby restaurants.

Zillow - I wonder what that house might be worth... what do homes in this area go for?...

Open Spot - new app from Google. it relies on other Open Spot users to report their parking space as open when they leave it. I'm not sure how useful this will be, as it requires users to report their spots, and in DC it doesn't even matter because for every open parking space there's two cars on the block looking for spots. Still, I wan't to try it...


New apps I just installed:

Traffic Cam Viewer - I just installed this yesterday. the interface is terrible, but with the amount of driving I do in a day, I need to know if the road I'm on is backed up. I use this and the traffic layer for Google maps to find out.

SDMove - written by our very own Bitt! It's definitely helpful to know which apps can be moved to SD storage.

Droid X intentionally perma-bricks if you try to install custom roms.

Okay, a semi-stupid Android question:

- How do you make it sync only "My Contacts" from Gmail rather than every contact, ever? I've found various instructions online for configuring HTC Sense UI phones, but those menu choices don't exist on my Droid X. Right now, it seems to be sucking in every Gmail contact I've got, which is far more than I want to see in the contact list.

And, some app questions. I've installed many of the apps above, but I'm still missing a few favorites from the iPhone.

- Apple's clock thing (particularly the world time display)

- Apple's weather thing (wherein you'd preload a bunch of cities and just flip across to see what's up. WeatherBug is okay, but not great. The Motorola Weather widget is also pretty clunky.

- TweetDeck was my preferred Twitter client, mainly because I could create two columns, one with my low-volume technie friends and one with high-volume locals, allowing me to keep my low-volume friends from being overwhelmed. I've got the official Twitter client and it doesn't seem to quite do what TweetDeck does best.

- Indeed, the David Lee Roth app is a sight to behold.

I don't have a specific recommendation on an Android Twitter client, but one thing that might help is to make use of the Twitter Lists function. Instead of using client side lists like TweetDeck supports, Twitter added official server side support for users to make lists out of various users. As long as you can find a decent Android app that supports lists, it may cover what you need.

Dan, I'll address your other points when I get a chance, but you have complete control over which contacts get synced.

[the following is on my Nexus One, so I don't know what, if anything, is different about the phone app with Motoblur]

-Open the phone app
-press the contact tab
-press the menu button
-press display options
-scroll down to "Choose contacts to display"
-expand the item with the subheading "Google" (most likely your gmail address)

**as you'll see, this is also where you can tell the phone to sync with Facebook contacts or Twitter contacts, if you have a client installed that supports it**

In there you can choose any of your contact groups to be displayed. On second thought, I think the phone will still sync all your contacts, but it'll only display the ones you choose here. Personally I'm fine with that, as it helps with email autocompletes.

Now that you're an Android user, just remember one thing: the menu button is your friend, the menu button is king. It's a huge point of contention between the iPhone and Android camps. I can see where the iPhone people are coming from, as they say it's a bad UI element. I'll agree that it isn't as elegant as the iPhone, but I feel like I have so much control over my apps because of that button. If I ever can't figure out how to do something in any app, the first thing I do is hit that button, and I'm almost always presented with the option I need.

One of the blogs I read just did a huge series of posts about Twitter clients:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

I hope one of the apps they recommend works for you. I'm an extremely light Twitter user, so the official app works great for me.

I'm not certain if there's a weather app as elegant as the one you describe (elegance is something that's only slowly coming to Android...very slowly ), but at the moment my favorite weather app is probably "The Weather Channel." Naturally, it's from The Weather Channel.

Sadly, I don't know what to recommend when it comes to clocks. I use the one that comes with Android because it pops up when I put my phone in its dock.

The only two choices I get are "search" and "speed dial setup".

I do agree that the menu button is a great point of distinction/contention when you're coming from an iPhone (that, and the proper use of the back button). One thing that's abundantly clear is that the proliferation of hacked front-ends (Motoblur, Sense, etc.) has made basic tech support on Android phones into a nightmare. I'm hoping that Google locks more of this down with Android 3.

So I entered my low/high volume split as two separate Twitter "lists". The UI on the phone is a bit clunky, but it does what I need.

Strange, I guess Motoblur replaces the built-in phone app. I agree that these replacement UIs are a problem, and frankly none of them are very compelling to me, so I wish they'd just leave them off or let you turn them on/off. The latter is difficult due to how deep these UIs have to dig into the OS.

The plain vanilla Android OS is fine for me, and while it's not pretty, I like it a lot. We'll see what it looks like when Gingerbread comes out, which is said to mainly focus on the appearance of the OS.

By the way, I just remembered that Motorola decided that when they put their UI on the phone with their widgets, they would remove some of the standard widgets, including the Google-created weather and news widget. I've heard really bad things about Motorola's widget, so it's very annoying that instead of giving the users a choice, they went so far as to remove the default widget entirely instead of just having it not enabled from the get-go.

*edit*
Question, though: what do you think of the phone, other than these various annoyances? Naturally, it takes some time to get used to the idiosyncrasies of a new platform, but do you have any opinion yet?

*edit 2*
BTW, apparently Popcap is hoping to have their games ported to Android this year. I can't wait for Plants vs Zombies on the go. I've been so annoyed that for over a year, the only game they had on the platform was a crappy Bejeweled game that everyone ignored for another similar game.

Overall I like the phone. I **really** like Swype, although it takes some serious time to get acclimated to its quirks. I find myself missing a variety of iPhone-isms, like holding a finger over text and having the magnifying glass show up so you can do fine selection. Android really assumes you've got some sort of hardware cursor, and you've got that on a Nexus One, but not on the Droid X. (Swype has a navigation mode where you get all sorts of nav keys to help you, but it shouldn't be necessary.)

I'm still getting used to various things. Today, I discovered that the "unified messaging" app (which I assume is some kind of Motorola addition) is fubar. I replied to a Facebook one-to-one message and it's currently posted two copies of each message. I assume this means I need to rip the awful thing out and get some alternative SMS app. Then, presumably, the regular Facebook app will let me deal with Facebook messages.

I had to re-read that sentence. The first time through I mentally finished it with "a spot and having the signal die."

Agreed on both counts. I'm going to try out another keyboard soon called "Swift Key" or something. It's on the market.


Oh wow, I hadn't even thought about that. Yeah, that's 90% of what I use the trackball for. Sorry, I'm not sure what to do if you don't have that. Perhaps this is something Gingerbread will address...


Wow, yeah, it sounds like you're suffering from some of the crap that Motorola put on there. It amazes me that Motorola still has even an inkling of a thought that they can write software. Do they not remember how awful their phones' UIs were? Android isn't the smoothest OS in the bunch, but it sounds like the stock build is better than what Moto or even HTC's UIs are.

It's too bad you can't put the stock build on there. Caleb is apparently slightly inaccurate in saying that the phone bricks if you try to put stock Froyo (or anything else) on. Apparently it comes back if you put the approved software back on. Depending on how well the Droid X sells, I can't imagine it will be long before someone figures out a way around that stupid eFuse thing that "protects Motorola's users." What BS.

Yeah, my post was based on an early report.

If they figure out how to get CyanogenMod on that phone, I recommend jumping on it. It's a really great ROM and would free you from a lot of the issues Motorola seems to be causing you to run into.

Apps Organizer (The Android Launcher's built-in folders can be a little limiting.)
Shortyz (I now suggest this over my previous crossword puzzle suggestion. It has autodownloads of a huge number of puzzles. There are a few bugs, but it's open source, so if he doesn't fix them, I can.)
Dropbox
IMDB (They finally came out with an official app. All the other ones sucked because they were just renderings of the web page, since they keep a tight rein on their community-provided data. Which would tend to imply that the official app will suck, too, but it's actually pretty good. My only complaint is that there's not a search box right on the opening screen.)

There are a large number of "remember things for me" apps, like Evernote (which is one of them), which seems like a great fit for a smartphone, but, so far, I've not been happy with any of them. They all seem to suck in one way or another. Ones I've played with at least a little so far include: Evernote, 3banana, Springpad, XeekuNote.

I hated 3banana. And frankly, I hated all the other "note taking" apps too. I'm still not certain why Evernote is so popular, especially since you have to pay for it if you want to use it to it's fullest.

I definitely recommend checking out Email to Self. That app is my note taking and reminder app

Does self really appreciate getting all your notes? Seems kind of rude.

Laser scanners can't, but they are for 1D barcodes only. The 2D "scanners" are actually an LED floodlight and a 2D CCD imager plus software that looks for and interprets the 2D barcode. This should work on almost anything, even if the screen is non-reflective like an OLED.

Bitt, thanks for your recommendation of App Organizer. I really do prefer it to the standard folders (they look better, for one thing).

There's just one thing I'm going to request from the developer:

So, once you've applied labels to your apps, you can create widgets on the desktop that are essentially folders that open and display all the apps with that label. Additionally, you can star apps so they will show if you press the star on the widget when it opens.

What it currently does is remember your star selection state across all widgets you've created. So, if I open one of the widgets, press the star so it's on, it shows my starred apps. When I close and reopen that widget, the star is still selected. When I go into another widget, the star is still selected there too. If I unselect the star in any of the widgets, it's now unselected across all of them.

What I'd prefer is that these states would be stored individually. In fact, I sort of wish there were an option to default to the star state for each or all of the home screen widgets.

Otherwise, I really like the app.

Are there any other good task/reminder apps besides gTask and Email To Self? I'm using AKNotepad, which is quick and easy, but doesn't have reminders.

I need something to remind me to do stuff, bugging me every day until I do it, or just bugging me every day to remind me. I used to abuse my calendar with recurring reminders, but that's just not the right use. Is there any apps which can do this? Sorry my request is vague... it's tough to define what I'm after.

Thanks.

I thought that Google Tasks interacted with Google Calendar. Doesn't that do what you want?

I've actually abandoned the gTask app for the mobile Google Tasks web site, but I don't need what you need, so I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what to recommend...

*edit*
Although, now that I think about it, Email to Self is how I do exactly what you're talking about. If you practice inbox zero, you're constantly annoyed by an email sitting in the inbox, and it reminds you every time you check your email to take care of that task. That's how I handle it, at least...

Astrid?

I was being irritated by only having five Home screens last night, so I went searching for a solution. The only ones I seemed to find were Home/Launcher replacements, which I'd tried before and hated. Their UIs were uniformly lousy. But I thought I'd give it another shot.

I don't know if I just didn't try the right ones before, or if the ones available now weren't when I first gave it a shot, but I'm upset that I didn't try these sooner.

After a few hours of playing, I feel like I can heartily recommend either LauncherPro or ADW.Launcher. If they're not both based largely on the default launcher, I would be mightily surprised. They both feel almost exactly like the default with some nice additions.

They share a lot of new features, while seemingly not losing any features of the stock launcher. The new features include support for up to seven screens, change of icon density, customizable home screen "dock" (where the button to get to the full app list is), rotatable home screen, ability to set an icon for virtually any "Intent", uninstallation of applications directly via drag to trashcan, support for scrolling home screen widgets, some UI changes to the all-apps list, etc.

(Why the limit at seven screens, though? Why not allow an arbitrary number?)

There are some differences between them. LauncherPro allows you to have the home screen "dock" be swipeable for multiple sets of launchers there. ADW allows you to pack icons onto the home screen to ridiculous levels. LauncherPro has the ability to create an icon for any Intent, even ones that don't exist, while ADW only provides the ability to launch Intents that are "published" in the API. There are some UI differences in the settings for some of the features. I tend to think that ADW has the upper hand there. ADW is open source, while LauncherPro is not. LauncherPro has an up-pay version with some widgets (which seem nice, but that I largely don't care about).

I decided that I really liked the swipeable dock, so I decided to go with LauncherPro. I think that if ADW adds this feature, I'll switch over, mostly to support the open-source nature. I may, in fact, look into implementing the feature myself. Point being, either ones seems a very good option.

For now, I'm really happy with an additional two screens and a 25% increase in screen app density, from sixteen icons per screen to twenty, which solves the problem I went looking for a solution for. The additional features are (very tasty) icing on the cake.

Shazam has a competitor now in SoundHound. SoundHound seems to simply do a better job matching music.

In my first test, it matched a classical recording from an FM broadcast playing on an alarm clock. And it wasn't exactly something super well-known, either: Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 2 in D. (Verified on the station's web site.) It made this match surprisingly quickly; about half the time that Shazam usually takes. Shazam failed to identify the recording.

In my second test, I sang "Amazing Grace" at it. It identified it right away. Shazam not only doesn't claim to do this, but actively says it can't.

In my third test, I sang "Back in the USSR" at it. I only halfway remembered how it went, though I did look up the lyrics. The first time it failed, the second time it got it.

The only drawbacks to Soundhound I can see are: the app size is much larger, something like 4.3MB vs. 1.8MB; Soundhound only does five free matches per month, which is actually true of Shazam, too, unless you'd already used it more than a few months ago when they changed their policy; and Shazam has an Intent to launch directly into the match (which means I can set an icon to do that on LauncherPro), whereas SoundHound doesn't seem to.

Anyway, I'm very impressed with Soundhound. Given that I still have unlimited searches with Shazam, I seldom, if ever, need to match classical music or songs that I want to hum, Shazam allows me to launch the matching much faster, and I kinda need the space back, I'm going to stick with Shazam. But Soundhound is a very strong competitor.

Re LauncherPro:

I've been using it for a few weeks now and I'm also very happy with it. I also like having a greater icon density, though it makes the homescreen look like crap in landscape (which the app even says its self when you enable it), but I've disabled landscape in the settings. The reason the density is important to me is because I actually don't want more home screens. I spend about 90% of my time outside of apps on my initial home screen, and rarely go to another one. This is because I use App Organizer to make those great folder replacements, and I feel like a single tap to open one of these is much faster than swiping even to the adjacent screen, let alone the last one. I like how in LauncherPro hitting the home button brings up thumbnails of all the homescreens to it's quicker to navigate to them, but that's still more movement than a single tap.

So yeah, pretty much the only reason I use LauncherPro is to fit more on the screen. I like having more rows and more icons on the bottom. Frankly, I wish I could make the home screen icons smaller so I could fit even more in one screen, but I'll live with this.


Re SoundHound:

Thanks for the info! I'll try that one out. I actually frequently need to know what a song is when all I know is how to hum or sing it, and Midomi... Ha! I just went to look up Midomi, which has been on the iPhone since forever, and always made me jealous because you could sing into it, and it turns out that it's the same app, they just renamed it.

I'll give it a shot. I don't like the larger file size, but I don't think I have unlimited Shazam searches anymore, even though I did have it before (I think I've wiped my phone since then, so that's probably why). Anyway, thanks again.


Oh, and I'm sure all Android owners are fully aware, but Angry Birds is finally out (in beta, at least) for Android. It works perfectly fine for me, and it's so refreshing to actually see a first-class game on Android. Maybe Popcap will get off their lazy asses and FINALLY release a decent game/port for the platform.

Check out ADW.Launcher, then. It allows you to set the screens to (up to) 8x8, and does some funky folding of icons to make them fit. It's not super-attractive, but it's functional. Worth checking out, anyway.

http://i.imgur.com/bL8SP.png

Ahh, another hit and run random link from Caleb with no discussion :-P

I left a mischievous emoticon as I stirred the pot!

A picture speaks a thousand words.

I only counted 206.

http://wordfeud.com/

Pretty neat Scrabble-like.

I was just getting ready to post that I thought I'd finally settled on Springpad.

3banana and its online presence, Snaptic, were recently renamed Catch. The Android app is very fast, but there is no markup possible in text.

Xeeku and most of the others with online components just feel like they will disappear before long. Some of the others aren't cross-platform at all.

Springpad's Android app is pretty good, as is the web site. Its problems lie in an inability to edit "rich text" on the Android app and lack of a native client for desktop OSes. You're just supposed to use the web interface, which makes web clipping virtually impossible.

Evernote's Android app in the market is just awful. Slow and awkwardly designed so as to make it even slower, and generally virtually useless. Nothing is cached locally, and network access is slow, so looking at anything takes forever. Sync is so miserable that changes you make on the Android don't even show up on the same device until many minutes later.

However, in composing this post, I found that there's a public beta of the Evernote Android app, and is very good. Speed has been improved dramatically. Caching has been implemented. The UI is far better. There's nothing about it that hasn't been improved tremendously. (It's worth pointing out that neither Evernote app will allow you to edit "rich text" notes. It does allow appending plain text to them, though, which is more than Springpad will do, and then you can go back later and reformat on the web or a desktop client, if needed.)

Also, there's a Java desktop client that works under Linux, Nevernote. It has some issues, but, by and large, it works pretty well.

So I think I'm back to Evernote for now. I don't really see anything at this point that would cause me to change, other than someone offering Evernote's premium features for free.

I like QuickDesk. Provides a means to switch between recently run/currently running apps and start new apps that you added to its display.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2010/10/22/...version-coming/