Rule 32: Enjoy the little things in life.

Time for some more great Droid Apps!

Apps:

Launcher Pro – If Task Killer is the first app you install, make this the second. I’ve tried out several home replacement apps, and this is by far the best one. It acts like the basic home Droid comes built in with and makes it more more useable and more customizeable. Truly great app. There is a free and paid version, and while for now paid version just gets a couple extra apps, please buy to support the developer, we want him to keep working on it!

App Aware – useful app for discovering other apps people have been using. Quite handy

DailyStrip – Comics, right on your phone, and a ton to choose from. One of my favorite apps.

DockRunner – Verizon’s overprice dock has a very nice app it runs. Now you can use the app without paying for the dock. Then you can do what I did, and build your own Dock out of K’Nex! Will post pics later.

Ethereal dialpad – Very fun music making touch screen. Kinda hard to describe, but very neat. Well worth a try.

Gigbox – Useful app for finding Music Shows around you and keeping track of artists

Gmote – Turns your Droid into a remote control for your computer’s media files. Totally sweet.

InfoDroid – Great small app for some basic info about your droid.

Layar – The is the app you see on most commercials. Overlays locations over a real time map. Pretty cool. Didn’t work perfectly in downtown valpo, but a very neat app, and hey, it’s free.

Mobile Queue – Manage your Netflix queue from anywhere! Many times I jot myself a note to ‘add to queue later’. Now I can add it on the fly. Very useful.

MusicSleep – not free, but only a dollar. Perfect for those of you like me who like to fall asleep to music. Sets a timer and then stops the music automatically once it runs out, so it’s not going all night. Works with most music programs including Slacker, Pandora, and Music.

Places Directory – Like Layar, but without the fancy camera overlay. Simply shows places around you in a nice organized manner. I like this one.

Scanner Radio – Lets you tune in to different radios in the area, from police to weather to other local stations.

WiFinder – Examines wi-fi networks in area. I’ve used this one many times for troubleshooting routers. Simple, elegant, works. Nice.

Games(cause we all like games, don’t we?):

Alchemy – Start off with four elements, Earth, Wind, Fire and Air, see what you can combie to get. Over 200 combinations.

BlowUp – Strategically place explosives for maximum destruction. Really like this one.

Coloroid – Clear the screen by making all tiles one color. Little tricky to get at first, but quite addictive.

Replica Island – Nice platformer starring everyone’s favorite Droid. Well made game.

Shoot U – Puzzle game where you try to hit the target. Too bad there’s stuff in the way. Good physics in this one.

Sweep – Fun clear-the-board game using poker chips. Tons of puzzles.

Now you tell me, what app have I left off the lists?

Greetings, as a follow up to my last post about the droid, here a few free apps that I’ve found interesting/useful/neat. The first two are the most important, then the rest are listed alphabetically.

Top 2:

Advanced Task Killer – The first app you should install. Will save your battery life by a ton. Free and paid versions, free should suffice.

Pandora – If you like music, (which you should), you should already be using Pandora on the web. Now that it’s on smartphones, Pandora is even better. Creates radio stations custom-tailored to your liking. Great for walks, or plugging in to your car stereo. Truly an awesome thing. Cannot recommend enough.

The rest:

ACV Comic reader – For my fellow geeks out there who save comics on their computers, this is a nice viewer. Currently I have all of Cable and Deadpool on mine. Good way to kill time when my piano students don’t show up.

Amazon Mp3 Store – Comes pre-installed on the droid, it is rather quite useful. I like amazon’s mp3 store. I used iTunes for a long time, but their fancy file formats and DRM are a pain to deal with. Amazon uses straight mp3s. Nice an easy and same price as iTunes. No reason not to use it.

Astro File Viewer – Easiest way to browse the files on your phone. Clean, efficient, I like it.

Bible (you version) – Just a nice bible app with alot of nice features like reading plans, etc.

Google Goggles – Essentially, a visual google search. Take a picture and then google attempts to search for what you took a picture of. Not perfect, but fun and useful. Great for looking up ratings/prices of things you might buy.

Google Sky Map – A rather ingenious app from google. Turn on your GPS, and it’ll tell you the name of constellations and other heavenly bodies. Wish I had this one during ASTRO 101.

Mabilo Ringtones and Wallpaper – Great free apps for finding Ringtones and Wallpaper. Acutally have a very nice selection.

Musical Lite – Found this app when I needed a metronome. There’s a paid and free version, paid has all sort of neat features, but you can probably get by with lite.

NewsRob – Great RSS feeder. Plugs in with Google reader.

Shazam – Identifies songs. Great for when you start listening to a song in the middle on the radio.

Sudoku Free – Great way to kill time. Simple, good input method, multiple skill levels. Nice.

The Schwartz Unleashed – A great lightsaber app. Yes, me and one of my coworkers have had lightsaber fights with these…

Twidroid – The best twitter app I’ve seen. There is a paid and a free version, free seems sufficient for me.

UrbanSpoon – If you’re like me, you’re probably indecisive about where to eat. With your GPS on, this slot-machine like app recommends a place to eat. Quite fun.

Weatherbug – This or the Weather Channel app. Both are great weather apps.

At the beginning of the year, I finally got tired of my Verizon EV2’s lousy reception. Down town Valpo was fine, but in my house I could barely hear a thing. Which is weird, as the rest of my family didn’t have this trouble. After looking at new phones for a while, my MP3 player died as well. This, as well as the recommendation of several friends, made me take a serious interest in the Motorola Droid. I never had an iPhone, so the world of smartphones was new to me. Nevertheless, as trial by fire is the best way to learn something, I took the plunge and upgraded (as per my plan with Verizon) to the Droid.

The Motorola Droid

My Droid, which I named Pip after Fallout’s Pip-boys, is awesome. I don’t know how it compares to other smart phones, as I don’t have much experience with them, but I do love my droid. The integration with google’s services (i.e. Calendar, Gmail) is great, as I’ve been using them heavily for years as my main email and calendar, and being able to access them from anywhere is fantastic. Also, the built in GPS (which works with Google Maps) does a fine job. And yes, the reception is more than significantly better.

One of the main things I use it for is listening to music. My last MP3 player was an 8gig Creative Labs. The Motorola Droid has a 16gig SD card built in. Apps are rarely more than a megabyte. So allowing a few gigs for pictures and apps, and I still have a large amount of space for music.  The speaker by itself is surprisingly sufficient.  Usually when I take Quinn for a walk I turn it on and put it in my pocket w/o headphones and it loud enough.

Now, a device is only worthwhile if it’s got the battery life to support it, and suffice to say that the droid’s battery is quite ample. The ‘advanced task killer’ application is a must.  Droid applications run in the background, and there are upside and downsides to this. The upside is that applications are pretty much saved as is until you call upon them again. The downside is that they consume resources (memory, battery) while they’re hidden in the background. Advanced Task Killer clears them from memory. There’s also an ignore list for ones you do want to keep running in the background, and it’s a free app. First app I had on there.

Now onto something very important, the interface and input. The main screen has three panels, center, left and right. Generally the center is where most people put their most used apps. Gmail, twitter, marketplace, camera, etc. Then the left and right panels are usually used for widgets, shortcuts etc. Simple, but more than does the job. Phone status updates are on a panel at the top which can be slid down for more details. The rest of the apps are kept in a tray at the bottom that’s slid up to reveal all the remaining apps.

Droid Main Screen

Droid Widgets

There are three different keyboards that can be used. When the phone is in it’s vertical position, a keyboard similar to that of a Blackberry takes up the lower half of the screen.

Droid Vertical Keyboard

The second is my input method of choice, the horizontal keyboard. Big enough for my piano player hands to manage. Admittedly there is a bit of a learning curve, but once you get used to it, it’s my preferred keyboard.

Droid Horizontal Keyboard

The last is, of course the physical keyboard. A very acceptable method. Great for the beginning of the learning curve.

Droid keypad

So if you’re on the edge, let me tell you one of my average uses for it that should help convince you. The other weekend I was taking a trip to my cousins’ house.  Been over a year since I’ve been there, so naturally my memory was fuzzy how to get there. So I fired up the GPS on Pip (my droid if you’ll remember) and navigated the way there. Also, while this was going I had Pandora running on Pip, providing us with an ample supply of great music. Guster and the like if you must know. While this was going on, my friend was surfing the net and facebook via Pip’s web browser. And we were still able to make and receive calls. I’m personally starting to think the word phone is a gross understatement. Perhaps smartphone is even an understatement. Personal Computer? No, we already have those. I don’t know. You tell me.