This app is a must have for Android users. You may not know this, but most apps stay active in memory after you exit them. Android only shuts them down when memory runs low so that you can switch back to the previous app and continue where you left off. The down side to this is your phone can slow down a little and your battery can drain faster. This app can speed things up and save your battery a little.
There is not much to say about the app. It pretty straight forward. It resides in your taskbar and when opened all you have to do is click a program to close it. The only thing missing in the option to confirm closing the app. People with fat fingers (why are you looking at me) can accidentally hit the wrong program and kill it.
The app comes in a free version and a paid version for 0.70 euro (about a $1) with the only difference being that you can add more than 2 tasks to an ignore list.
The cyrket site that I listed before is down, but the QR codes are listed in the link below.
Up until now there have not been many options for turn by turn navigation GPS on the Android platform in North America. The largest one right now is TeleNav who charges $9.99 a month. Google maps tracks you in real time, but without the turn by turn and auto correction of a route if you chose to change you path.
So who better to out do Google, well Google. Google Maps Navigation has been confirmed for Android 2.0 (not available for myTouch yet) which will first be on Verizon’s Droid. Check out the video on this new feature below. This is how all GPS devices should look. The best part of this that like all Google services, it’s free (minus the information they are gathering).
So the last few days I have been checking out an app called DroidLive. So far this has been one of my favorite apps. This app lets you stream live internet radio feeds to your phone that use the SHOUTcast servers. Right now there are 31,336 streams. Some of my favorite movie soundtrack stations and old hip-hop stations. This weekend I am going to see if anyone is streaming the Raider game.
As a test yesterday I drove to work (about 10 miles through the city) and listened to a station the whole way. Today I lost the signal a few times. Streaming services were never really designed for data devices that are constantly moving like cell phones. Of course all it would take is a 5-10 second buffer to avoid this which it may have and I passed that up. While walking or running in the city I am guessing the signal will be steady. I might test the walking, but good luck on me testing the running unless a pack of wild dogs starts to chase me. At that point the myTouch becomes a weapon.
The interface let’s you look at the top stations, browse by genre, search, view favorites, view history and view tagged. The favorites and tagged are a really good feature. I tried out another SHOUTcast app and it didn’t have the ability to ad favorites. It didn’t last long on my phone. Most of the music that is streamed contains tags like mp3’s that contain the artist and song title. If you hear a song you like you can press the tagged button and add it to a list that you can view later. Then you can go to your favorite music store and purchase the song.
This app comes as a free app with ads or $2.99 (one time) for the no ad version. As far as I can tell all the features are the same between both. They did strategically place the adds so that you might accidentally hit them which I have done.
One of the big issues with viewing websites on a portable device is that most web pages are designed for higher resolution displays. Nowadays most large sites have a site designed for mobile devices. When you browse to the site it will automatically detect your device and load the appropriate site version.
Remember I said most large sites, well feartheninja.com is moving up because now you can browse with your mobile device.
In the first few days I installed/uninstalled many apps. I was like a kid again with a new toy. I have many to talk about, but this one is related to the site so I will focus on this one first. The app is called wpToGo. You guessed it, (I hope ) it’s short for ‘Word Press to go’. This app will let you sign into your Word Press account and add/edit posts, view comments and more. It will even let you manage more than one account.
Below are screenshots from the application:
main screen
add new account
moderate comments
recent post list
add/edit post (view 1)
add/edit post (view 2)
The only thing I couldn’t find was a way to reply to a comment. The other day I received a text message saying there was a new comment, but I couldn’t do anything with it. I have not used the program much so it might still be there and I over looked it.
Other than that the program was easy to setup and use. You wouldn’t use the myTouch to make a large blog post, but for little updates it can be useful.
Note: I almost forgot, you have to change a setting in Word Press to enable remote posting. In the admin panel under Settings >> Writting there is a setting you have to enable labeled XML-RPC.
One of the first apps I recommend is a barcode scanning app. The app I installed was called Barcode Scanner. This app is used to scan QR codes. These QR codes can be used to store contact data, calendar data, and most importantly URL’s.
One of the sites I look to for reviews is http://www.androlib.com/. If you click on any app you will see a code that looks like this:
Once you have Barcode Scanner installed you can scan the code on the apps page and it will take you directly to the app so you can download it.
For a bonus scan the QR code in the banner up top.
So now that I have used my new phone for a few days I thought that I would talk about some of the applications that I have used. The first this you will figure out it that there are thousands of apps for the Android OS and like any OS a high number of them are junk. I don’t claim to be an expert on them, but the review systems help out a lot to narrow them down.
Right now the main location to download and install programs is from the Market which is a default app on the phone. From here you can search for an app by name, browse categories apps/games, browse subcategories and show a list of top free/paid. Currently there is not a way to sort by review rating, but I am assuming this is to keep competition up. Luckily there are many sites that review apps to make it easier.
It’s been a long time since I posted, but I have something to blog about now.
For a while I have been very interested in getting a smart phone. I am not going to lie, it all started when the iphone came out a few years ago. The largest hurdle for me was paying the monthly data fee, which is required, with paying $149 being the second hurdle. Have the data plan is really required for all the great features, but it’s hard dropping money monthly. Last week I did some computer work for my dentist which made the second hurdle a non factor plus covered a few months data.
I finally decided the other day that I was going to do it. Dropping money and committing to 2 years is kind of scary idea. When I entered the store I was ready to buy but started to have second thought while waiting. When the sales guy walks over I start asking questions that I really knew the answers to just to hear him confirm them. It was then that I asked if he had any in stock almost expecting him to say ‘not right now’. Well he didn’t and ran and grabbed one. It was then that I said “I’ll take it”. Right after that I confirmed the pricing. The standard fee for data that you have to get is $34.99 which includes unlimited data and unlimited text messages. I already had the unlimited text messages for all the lines so I had to pay only $24.99 a month. Even now I am trying not to think about it. I’m not going to lie as I drove home I remembered when the T-Mobile rep said “You have 14 days to return it if you don’t like it.”.
So you might be wondering what phone I bought. Well I decided on the T-Mobile myTouch 3G.
The one that I decided on was black. It also comes in White and Merlot. The size is comparable to the current lineup of smart phones.
While phone searching I had a few models in mind. Specifically the Blackberry Curve and the Nokia E71.
The Curve seemed to business like for me. It seems great for e-mail and texting, but lacks the great touchscreen browsing and 3G that the myTouch has. The plus for the Curve was the physical keyboard.
The E71 was above my price range, but it was unlocked so I wouldn’t have to extend my contract or be required to buy the data plane. Feature wise it was comparable to the Curve. The E71 does have 3G, but it doesn’t work on T-Mobile’s network.
The large display, touch screen and all the apps won me over for the myTouch.
