Must-Have Android Apps
I’m not really saying that you must-have these as much as I’m saying that when I nuke my Hero (which I like to do regularly) these are the apps that I must-have as I set it back up. Maybe you’ll find something you like here too:
- K-9 Mail: The IMAP client on my phone is serviceable, but K-9 mail (which is based on the same project) is a much more featured app and I find it more enjoyable to use.
- Barcode Scanner: I have really come to love QR codes and Barcode scanner is the best app that I’ve found for reading them. My favorite use? Partnered with either the Firefox plugin Mobile Barcoder or the Chrome extension QR-Code Tag Extension, I can quickly get the same page on my phone that I’m looking at on my computer to read on the go.
- Amazon: I’ve tweeted it before, but I love to scan barcodes in stores and price match it against Amazon and if I find a better price, tap the order button.
- FlightTrack Pro and Tripit: These are two apps, but if you use one you should really grab the other. Tripit is a free internet service that is great for building and sharing itineraries (which you can do by simply emailing them your hotel/flight/car reservations). They have an app, but it is mostly to reference your itinerary data. FlightTrack Pro is a flight tracking app that ties into your Tripit account and will automatically show you your (or shared) flights. It sports notifications and a nice widget displaying information about your next flight. On my last trip, FlightTrack notified me as soon as we landed and I had my phone on that there had been a gate change.
- Listen: This is Google’s podcast application and was one of the things I was most excited about when I got my Android phone (and one of the biggest disappointments). The app has been upgraded a few times though since I started using it and it is now a very good app that I enjoy using. One of the nicest new features is that it ties into Google Reader so if you want to add a podcast while at your computer, just subscribe to the feed in reader and put it in your “Listen Subscriptions” folder.
- Locale: This is the newest addition to my phone, but I am really really enjoying it. Locale allows you to change the settings on your phone dependent on situational variables. In my case, I have it drop the ringtone volume, turn off bluetooth, set my Google Talk status to “work” and change my wallpaper when it detects the wireless network at work while at home it turns up the volumes since I tend to leave the phone all over and switches to a more fun ringtone. You can adjust many settings and there are a lot of plugins for it in the market to extend it further.
- Radiotime: I love news/sports radio and I like to hear things things being covered locally. When the huskers are playing I often have the opposing team’s broadcast tuned in to see what they are saying while news events are great times to tune in stations local to that event. Radiotime makes this easy. If nothing else, it is the easiest way I have found to listen to Nebraska NPR radio on Android.
- SMS Popup: I love to text message and I receive quite a lot of text messages. SMS popup is a great replacement to the standard notifications on my phone, offering a popup dialog containing any new message and customizable buttons to do things like delete the message, reply or even do a quick reply from a list of pre-composed replies.
- Seesmic: There are a lot of twitter clients for Android. I think this is one of the prettier ones, it has a solid feature set and it is free.
What apps are on your must-have list?
Quickly Recovering Web Site Content
It happens regularly to me. I drill a piece of page code while doing some updates. Last week, someone called me in a half-panic because a link that they instructed all of their employees to use had disappeared. Sure enough, I had been working on that page earlier, replacing some PDF links and must have accidentally removed a link I didn’t mean to. So, what did I do?
First, we do have backups and if an entire directory gets whapped or there are other serious issues, I always have that to fall back on, but it can take a lot of work to get into the backups and recover what you are after and in this case I’m looking for one line of code, so I’d like something quicker.
This is a great time to use Google’s web cache. Simply search for the URL of the page you need to fix and Google will very likely have a cached version available that you can use to recover what you lost.
It’s embarrassing, but we actually recovered many MANY sites based on userland Manila after a crash using this method several years ago. We were able to get the images, code and fully recover the sites.
Some iPad Thoughts
I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts discussing the iPad and have seen the details and have come to the conclusion that we have not seen the iPad. What we have seen is likely very close, but I think that Apple hasn’t shown us everything yet. Here’s some quick points:
- The app store has become what has really set the iPhone apart from other phones and I’m sure Apple wants the iPad to have great apps on day 1. In order for this to happen, you need to give developers time to create for it.
- There’s no way to get development for it without letting everybody know about it, so you are really forced to have a launch event.
- If you are pulling developers in, you really need to provide some apps that show your vision for the device by providing some sample apps as Apple did with mail, photos and iWork.
- This is clearly a BIG product for apple and there is NO way that they are going to iterate the iPhone OS by 1/10 for it.
- Developers do not need to know what is coming in iPhone OS 4 in order to start making content for it.
- The iPhone is overdue for an overhaul and showing iPhone OS 4 now may give some hints of where they are going with the iPhone before they are ready.
- It seems clear through APIs and UI elements found in XCode and on the iPad launch day that camera support is there.
- The iPad is not coming out for two months.
So, given these things, I just think that Apple told us what they felt they had to in order to get development going for it but that the software particularly but perhaps the hardware too may not be what was demonstrated.
What do you think?
The Palm Pre Battery
The biggest complaint about the Palm Pre is the battery. Here are some tips to not find yourself with a dead battery before you are ready to go to bed:
- Sign out of messaging, especially if you are at your computer. Having that always-on connection to AIM and Google Talk will really tap your battery.
- Turn off the GPS. The navigation app is nice enough to turn it on for you should you forget before you launch it.
- Disable notifications that you don’t really need. If you want score notifications for an NFL team, don’t leave the app looking for score notifications all week for something that happens in a four hour window on Sunday. Also consider that receiving SMS notifications is less battery-intensive than application notifications (and on Sprint Simply Everything, those are unlimited). Use Twitter/Facebook SMS notifications, score notifications through services like 4info, etc.
- Close cards that you aren’t using. An active card is an active application. You could unknowingly have a web page that is auto-updating or some other process going on unnecessarily.
- Choose only calendars that you really need. I know I have a lot of calendars myself, but many of them are ones that I don’t really need to see on my everyday view. If you have 20 calendars like me, choose the 5 that you really want to see.
- Use WiFi when you can. It uses a lot less power to do data operations over WiFi than Evdo.
- Use a TouchStone. These things are kind of expensive, but even with the above I don’t think I could get through the day without one. Besides being a handy way to keep the phone charged, it really is a nice functional addition to the phone by making it into a desk clock and making it even easier to answer calls (auto-answer when you pick phone off of stone).
- Get a bigger battery. There are some after-market batteries available. Unfortunately, except for one made my Seidio that only provides about 20% more life than the stock battery, they require alternative back hatches that make the Pre bigger (and they don’t work with the TouchStone).
- Get a portable battery charger. While this isn’t a great way on a normal day to stay charged it may be very handy if you’d like to use your pre on a trip and are afraid that you might get to your destination without a charge. There are many of these on the market now that are basically a battery with a USB port that you can plug anything into to get a little charge.
It’s unfortunate that such a great phone otherwise is hampered by this less than adequate battery. If you are not one that uses the phone much to do web browsing/twitter/etc, you may find no issues. My wife has a Pre and while she does some smart-phony stuff with it, she mostly uses the phone and the text messaging and is able to pull almost two days out of the battery.
