Posts Tagged ‘Android’
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Pebble Smartwatch: We want one!
Have you ever wanted to be able to control everything on your smartphone from your watch? I have. I may not wear a watch often, but I think I can chalk that excuse up to not being able to do what Pebble does. Can your watch:
- Sync with your iPhone or Android?
- Have an e-paper display that displays perfectly inside and outside?
- Work as a GPS meter?
- Work a pedometer?
- Show you your text messages?
- Control your music applications?
Pebble can? At least, it will once it’s made. They are currently on Kickstarter looking for a few bucks to help make the product. This will be amazing, and will even feature an open SDK (so anybody can make apps for it). If you can spare it, putting some money into this project is my suggestion. I just hope that for us cheap people out there, it will be a good price when it comes out.
What do you think, is this something you’d be interested in getting? And how much would you pay a watch like this? Let me know in the comments below.
[Via Android and Me]
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FlyScreen [App]
Fly Screen is a new type of App, that is located in a place that not many app developers fear to go: The lock screen.
What Fly Screen does is allow you to put widgets on your lock screen, to save you time from having to unlock your phone, go to the screen with the widget on it, then see what you wanted to see. Right now there is built in access to e-mail, text messages, twitter, facebook, foursquare and many news sites. You can also add native android widgets.I love the idea, but it could still use some work. They are heading in the right direction though which is important. I’d like to see them implement this but then put a password protection on the lock/options. This way you can give your phone to somebody else to listen to music, or surf the net without worrying about them reading your e-mails.
- Pros:
- Can make use of the empty space on the lock screen and fill it with stuff.
- Haven’t seen this done much before.
- Can be better:
- Can only put one widget on each screen. I’d like to be able to put my music player, bluetooth on/off and volume on the same screen.
- Loads a little slow, as it seems to load my default lock, then switch each time.
Fly Screen is available for Android (1.6 and higher) in the market, as well as Symbian (Nokia).
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Personal Assistant: Makes good coffee [App]
Sorry to lie, this app doesn’t actually make you coffee. It does do everything else a good assistant does though. Today I’m talking about Pageonce‘s cross-platform Personal Assistant application.
Personal Assistant allows you to access your bank accounts, credit cards, bills, shopping wishlists, social networking sites,e-mail, travel schedule (and more!) through your one application.I use mine currently for my checking account and credit card, as well as my internet and phone bills. For bank accounts, it shows your your balance and all your transactions. For credit cards, you can see your spending limit, how much of it you’ve used, your minimum needed payment as well as when that is due.
My Internet bill shows when it is due and how much. My monthly phone bill shows me when my payment is due, how much it’s for; as well as how many minutes, text and data I’ve used this month. My prepaid phone just shows the balance remaining and when it expires.
PageOnce also has an transactions section, which lets you see changes and updates at a glance. This is a nice thing to check daily, just to make sure nothing happened during the day that you didn’t authorize. Personal Assistant also monitors your bills for you, and send you out an e-mail a few days in advance as a ‘change that might interest you’. This serves a great purpose when you get an e-mail letting you know that your bill is due in 5 days, there is more chance of remembering to pay it.Did I mention this is free? Well it is. There is a premium version which offers unlimited accounts (I believe free is 10) and they are working on allowing multiple updates daily as well. I’m tempted to buy the premium version just to support the developer because I love how simple and affective it is. Having all of my finances (or lack there of) right at my finger tips at all times makes me almost feel like an adult! Come to think of it, not so sure I like that.
- Pros:
- Free
- Has all the services I need
- Great interface
- Easy to set up
- Can Be Improved:
- Would like to see a widget
- Only updates once a day with the free version
Personal Assistant is available on all major mobile systems: Android, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and iPhone.
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Cubed Music Player [App]
Myself, like 99.9% of all Android users, are disappointed and honestly hate the lack of originality and horrible sorting in the default stock music player in Android 2.0. Well maybe not hate, but I wouldn’t say that I’d vote for it any any contests anytime soon. I want it to be not only functional, but pretty as well. Cubed ( “3″ ) does that and not only makes it look easy but actually makes using it easy.
What Cubed (formerly known as Rock On) does is takes your entire library, downloads the Album covers for it and turns it into a giant…well cube. You can then spin in horizontally to pick the artist by letter, or flick it vertically to just let it spin through them all the albums. Tapping on the facing cube will list you the songs from that artist, on that album. It’s pretty sweet, has no lag while flicking and is fun to just spin the cube around.
This app features all the required functions: Next, back, random, repeat. It also throws in themes (effects to the cover art) and three different sized widgets that all show cover art. They also have a ‘concert’ app attached, though it doesn’t seem to work too well in my location.
- Pros:
- Better interface than stock app
- Album covers easily downloaded
- Fun to play around with
- Supports search
- Good Widgets
- Cons:
- Can’t spin cube from widget
- Did mess up on some of the album covers
- Auto-flip back to current song if you pause too long while browsing albums
I’ve yet to find something that can compare in quality, and I think that it holds a lot of promise as it progresses through it’s beta. For anybody who uses their music player on a regular basis, Cubed is my suggestion for your music app.
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Urban Spoon [App]
On today’s menu, we’re featuring a lovely Urban Spoon with a side dish of multi-device support topped with a light glaze of amusement. It’s like Shake n Bake, without the Baking.
Instead of arguing about what to have for dinner, why not leave it to chance? Urban spoon provides you with a fun roulette that will tell you quick where, what and how much you’re going to pay to eat with just one quick wrist gesture. You pick the location, then give your phone a slight shake and it will randomly pick what kind of food you’re eating tonight and find a restaurant in that category. The price option is a big help too so you don’t end up buying a $70 steak with rent money (Which is awesome if you’re totally broke like me). When it finds the restaurant, it gives you info on where it is, the phone number, if it has delivery, and often some reviews.My city currently only has 140 restaurants, which leave a TON of room for improvement. Given how many placed to eat there are around here, this app has almost inspired me to actually travel around my town to new places I haven’t been to before just so I can add some more restaurant onto the list. I’d advise you to do the same, it’s not only a good way to contribute, but this can prove to be a good marketing platform for local businesses.
Urban Spoon is available through their website or mobile site if you just want to do some browsing. You can get Urban Spoon’s addictive little app on Android (2.0+), iPhone, or Blackberry.
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Gowalla & Foursquare: LBS smackdown [Apps]
Everybody loves doing something else while doing something boring. At least I do. Lately, this is where Location Based Services (LBS) are filling my void. My current loves are Gowalla and Foursquare.
Both of these services allow you to travel around town, and using your GPS you can ‘check in’ where ever you are. I honestly can not figure out why it’s so cool, since nobody actually is looking up where I am, but it’s fun to think that somebody can.
What intrigues me is that it’s been made into a game in a few different ways. For instance, checking in at the mall, then the coffee place, then at work; I will get 3 points for having 3 check-ins plus a bonus if it is the first time checking in to that location. You can also get ‘badges’ for accomplishing various tasks or at random. They don’t do anything, but you can show them off to your friends.
An added feature is ‘mayorships’. If you’ve checked into a certain place more than anybody else, you become the mayor. In this sense, when somebody else checks in to that place, they see that you’re the mayor. You can also see how many people have been at each place, and who is there now.
What is putting Gowalla above Foursquare in my mind right now is graphics and items. Foursquare is mainly text, where as Gowalla has nice pictures beside it and actually requires you to be within range of the location to check in. Once checked in on Gowalla, you can also pick up items (if there are anythere) or drop an item. When you take one, you need to drop one. The next person that checks in, can then choose to take your dropped item if they want. It’s a fun way to feel connected to those who you don’t know, as it shows the history of an item when you look at it.
I would love to see these become more popular, and it seems to be here in Kingston. I’d love to see 3 of my coworkers checked in at work, to feel connected in suffering. I’m just waiting for a beta invite to Check.In, where I can check-in on both applications at the same time.Gowalla is available on Android, iPhone, Palm OS (I’m shocked too) and mobile site for those out of the loops.
Foursquare is available for Android, Iphone and blackberry.Do you use LBS? If so, what ones do you like using, or why not?
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Hoccer [App]
Today’s awesome app is named Hoccer. It is available for both Android devices, as well as iPhones, and may be the coolest program of all time.
Doesn’t having to transfer stuff to people suck? I hate having to e-mail something just to attach a picture, or share a song. This is where Hoccer jumps in. With Hoccer, you just need two phones somewhere around each other within 100 feet and you can actually drag it off your phone, on to their phone or throw it through the air. Easy as that, no kidding.
Hoccer uses location based file sharing. In short: You throw it, server catches it. When somebody that is in the same area as you tries to catch it, the server checks recent throws. Theoretically, this means that multiple people can catch one throw if they time it right. That I’d love to see.
A buddy of mine (also using android) and I did this on the bus. We had some issues with actual ‘hoccing’ (it could be because we were on a moving bus at the time) but ‘sweeping’ worked easily enough and he got the .apk file no problem.
I’m going to have to keep playing around with this when I have free time, I would love to throw files around all willy-nilly. Not sure how often I’d use this, but god damn if it isn’t totally bad ass to show off.
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Address Book by Asurion [Android]
As promised, let’s do a week full of awesome and helpful Android applications.
First off, is Address Book by Asurion. This application is just what it says it is: An address book. As much as I love Android, the contact list can use a bit of a touch up.
Address Book has a beautiful user interface (it’s blue) and gives more options than the contact list. To be specific: Social networking combination. By installing Address Book as well as the ‘MixIns’ that you want, you can sync your Google contacts with your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Amazon friends. I love being able to keep everything in one spot.The Navigation is easy. You have a Dialer, History, Contacts, and Favorites button at the bottom. History will show you all calls, tweets, FB updates, and texts from all contacts in chronological order. Contacts are alphabetical. On the right of everybody’s name is a summary of which networks you have for that person. Favorites are the people you talk to the most, and is separated by social networks. Tapping on a contact’s name, you get the options to see their feeds, info and calls (see image).
I quite honestly love this application, it’s exactly what I wanted. I attempted to find a way to get MotoBlur onto this Milestone, but not so worried anymore. I would suggest anybody using Android 1.6 or higher give it a try.
Address Book By Asurion
Android 1.6:
Android 2+: 
What do you use for keeping in touch?
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Review: Motorola Milestone
It’s been a long time since I’ve had a good phone that I can call smart. My last quality phone as the HTC S640 running Windows 6.1, so that’s not saying much.
I decided to pick up the new Telus Motorola Milestone. It’s a pretty awesome looking phone right out of the box, seems sturdy. It has a huge 3.7″ WVGA multi-touch screen, with a slide out keyboard.The Milestone is running Android version 2.0.1, which is hella-fast. It honestly feel like pure power in your hand *Tim Taylor grunt*. Compared to the other interfaces I’ve used on phones, I’m loving the customization options that come with Android. The click, drop and drag is pretty. I’m using DxTop as my Home replacement right now. It gives an extra bar at the bottom for running and recently opened processes, and gives it a nice look at that. Compared to the other home repleacements (such as open home, panda home, or sweeter home) I find it also leaves the system running smoothly, without lag when I jump back home. I’m quite the fan.
As a newbie to actual Android use as a whole, I’m finding that there really is an app for everything. Right now my top apps are Astrid, Personal Assistant Free, Asurion Address book, Shop Savvy, Fring, Adobe Photoshop Mobile, Shazam, Slacker Radio, Urban Spoon, Where’s my droid, WordPress mobile. I’m not going to go into everything (right now), but I’ve yet to find a realistic thing my phone can’t do.
It’s running on Telus’ 3G network, which has pretty good speeds. I’m not seeing a huge differences between that and my wi-fi. Though I will say that Telus’ data plans leave something to be desired, $50 for 500mb isn’t too great.
If there was anything to complain about, it’s that the App Market is still limited to free apps. According to some reports, we’re supposed to be getting access to the paid apps soon, so it may not be all bad.
An update I just read today is that Motorola purposely made the Milestone difficult to root, which I find is retarded. I’m dissapointed that I’ve gone out and paid full retail price for this phone, and now need to hope that it eventually can be rooted. Oh well, still a great phone.
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