The Mobile Ping - Podcast 12 (.mp3)

For iTunes Users

It’s not uncommon to find phones that have downloadable applications and stores in which to purchase said applications. However, one thing that always set Android apart for me were the types of applications that the Market strives towards. So I decided to try and create a top 10 list of applications that I use on a daily basis.

This was much more difficult that I originally thought it was going to end up being. There’s so many apps that I use regularly, so it was difficult to choose only ten to talk about while also ranking them. Anyway, here it goes:

10. Barcode Scanner

• This application is simple, but opens up a ton of possibilities if more phones took advantage of being able to scan barcodes. On the surface, this application lets you scan any type of barcode and see the contents. Maybe there’s a message, or perhaps it’s a UPC which then lets you do a product search. What’s most interesting is that you can create a QR barcode for any of your contacts, essentially creating a digital business card anyone else can quickly scan into their phone to get my two cell phone numbers, two e-mail addresses, and my physical address. Unfortunately you can’t save a .jpg of the generated barcode, because I could definitely print that on the back of my business card.

9. SNesoid

• This is simply a SNES emulator, but really, it opens up the platform to a huge catalog of amazing games. I generally don’t play games on my phone but when I do have some down time it’s great to be able to boot up some E.V.O, or with Gensoid rock some Sonic the Hedgehog. They aren’t perfect yet, and there can be some performance issues for some games, but games that don’t rely on twitch work great. Hopefully we start to see these emulators perfected now that the Native Developer Kit was released.

8. Ringdroid

• Ringdroid is a full featured audio editor that allows you to create your own ringtones from any song on your SD card. I generally don’t change my ringtone too frequently, so I use Ringdroid probably the least out of most of my apps, however I had to feature it because of how well executed it is. It’s got a great interface, and figuring in all of the processing that’s going on, it performs great, and for me has been quite stable. Definitely useful when the perfect part of a song pops in your head and you want it as a ringtone.

7. AK Notepad

• I found it odd that Android didn’t come with a built-in note-taking application, I figure it would’ve been fairly easy for Google to bang one out. Luckily there’s a large array of quality note apps available. My favorite has to be AK Notepad. It’s simple, straightforward and robust. You can easily move notes on and off of your SD card, you can e-mail the notes, SMS them, anything. If you want to be reminded of a note in the future, just setup an alarm and you’ll get notified. There’s not much to say about taking notes, you write things down for future reference, AK Notepad just does it better for me than any other app.

6. AndroZIP

• Another thing lacking from Android was any sort of file explorer. It’s not entirely necissary, but it does come in handy from time to time. I originally found AndroZIP because I needed to unzip a file that I downloaded directly onto the phone. AndroZIP did a great job, but I also noticed that it gave me more file managing capabilities than the previous app I was using just for that task. AndroZIP allows you to easily move, delete, copy, rename and unzip (including .rar and some other archive file types) files.

5. Twidroid

• This was a hard decision to make, mainly because different people want different things out of a twitter client. Some people want to be updated as soon as possible, others are more casual. If you can tell from the frequency of our own twitter account, you could probably tell that we’re fairly casual. I believe Twidroid provides the best client that caters to both types of users. It can notify you every five minutes of updates or as little as once a day, I personally have notifications turned off. The client itself supports all the photo, url and location sharing goodies you’re used to. Twidroid doesn’t stand out in it’s execution or unique features, it’s just rock solid and very customizable.

4. Gmote

• There’s been a few apps like Gmote cropping up in the iPhone/Android crop, but Gmote does it best in my experience. I personally haven’t used Air Mouse or anything similar on the iPhone, but I have seen them in action. On the surface they seem to work just as well as Gmote. The desktop client supports Linux, Mac OS X and Windows and allows you to browse the file structure on any of those operating systems and choose to launch the proper application either on the computer or directly on the phone. What ends up setting Gmote apart isn’t completely the software, it’s the G1 that provides the ideal platform. When in touchpad mode not only does the touch screen become a standard laptop trackpad, but the trackball becomes you mouse click and the great landscape keyboard provides input directly on your computer. It’s essentially the perfect remote for a computer hooked up to your TV.

3. ToggleWifi

• This is probably one of the simplest applications in the entire Android Market, but it’s one that I use almost constantly. The name says it all, you click the icon and Wifi is either toggled on or off, beauty is, this icon can be placed anywhere. Beats going through the settings menu.

2. Advanced Task Manager

• Something that will always “plague” multitasking operating systems is the need to micromanage what is running and what isn’t running. That’s where Advanced Task Manager comes in. Simply select a program to get the option to end the task, or simply choose the end all tasks currently running. It works great, and after a bit of a hiccup with the “End All” widget everything seems to be running smoothly. I personally am glad that Android essentially needs something like this. It helps weed out the newbs.

1. ConnectBot

• I probably use ConnectBot the least overall, but the capabilities it can provide essentially make the possibilities on my phone endless (as long as I have a good server to SSH into). We’re lucky enough in this area to have an ISP that fully supports open-source and believes in providing as much access to their servers as  is feasible. All of our web-hosting goes through them, so having a shell-enabled account with them allows me to easily move files around, upload files, and even access programs specific to their server (like VIM for text editing, etc) wirelessly through my phone. ConnectBot is a solid app in it’s own right, but on it’s own it’s not very impressive, but with a good server to connect to it allows me to do things on my phone that make even the most jail-broken iPhone jealous.

We’re moving on up to podcast 11, a bit of a longer podcast for you. We ended up covering the likes of Google Voice, Verizons App Store plans and some other topical goodies.

The Mobile Ping - Podcast 11 (.mp3)

For iTunes Users

So please enjoy one of our most loosely planned podcasts. We ended up talking a lot about some of the things we would like out of Android, plus a little bit about Chrome OS and what that could potentially mean for operating systems and mostly Linux in the future.

The Mobile Ping - Podcast 10 (.mp3)

For iTunes Users

We have an exciting announcement for this week’s podcast: it’s video! We haven’t even started editing, and we’re working out the details as far as how we’ll run it on our feed. In the meantime, why don’t you check out some quick snippets we recorded on our phones to test out and compare the video quality.

Catch us on YouTube!

-marvel at my lame photoshop skillz

For our first Living with Android post, I wanted to start by talking about what may become Android’s greatest strength; the ability to download alternative applications to Google’s built-in apps. The main reason Android got all of geek-dom supremely excited was it’s Open-Source nature. Meaning all parts of the phone will be open and accessible to any developers. If you don’t like how contacts are managed or you want more workspaces for your home screen, not a problem, either write you own version to your liking or peruse the Android Market for an alternative that seems to hit the points you were looking for. At the end of the day Android isn’t quite as open as originally intended, but it’s still miles beyond any of the competition.

With most, if not all other mobile phone platforms, the default applications for SMS or E-Mail or even the Phone are locked so that they cannot be replaced by a third party application, and in some cases (like the iPhone) you’re barely able to even really interact with any of the data within those default applications. This is one part of Android that really sets it apart. When you start to dive into the Android Market you’ll notice different Address Book applications, different SMS applications and even some different web browsers. Personally I’m very happy with most of the Google built applications, but they don’t do some things that some users may need. Like for instance, if you are using a “With Google” branded Android phone there is no built in Microsoft Exchange support, however it’s not too difficult to find a contact managing application that allows for Exchange support. Similarly there’s no built in support for desktop synchronization with Outlook, yup, there’s an app for that.

This could be viewed as a bad thing for some people. How could I consider Android a great smart phone platform if it doesn’t have support for such ubiquitous business applications? Well, how about you look at Microsoft’s own Desktop operating system, which does not include Outlook or Exchange support out of the box. Google’s objective is to create a promising and powerful open sourced mobile operating system. Furthermore they decided to bundle it with very powerful applications that work in tandem with the platforms they know best, their own software. With Android you don’t have to wait for Google to integrate Exchange support like you did with Apple and their iPhone. Instead you maybe had to wait a few months until a reliable application was released in the Market. And that’s what it’s all about; options and choices put into the users hands.

I would like to now tell a quick story about how the alternative applications available to Android have benefited me. There is a great SNES emulator available on Android Market called SNesoid (something you would never see in the App Store). I loaded a few roms onto my SD card before going to work for the day, but around the time of my lunch break I realized that I had forgot one. So I browsed around and found a rom of a game (I actually do own) and tried to download it. Unfortunately the file was zipped, and Chrome told me that the phone didn’t support that file format. Lame, I thought. But then I remembered there was another browser on the market called Steel. I promptly downloaded the app, copy and pasted the URL from Chrome into Steel and was allowed to download the zip file. I was then able to download an application called AndroZIP to unzip the file, and move it into my Rom folder on my SD card. And that’s the thing about Android that I love. If at first you can’t do something, there’s probably an alternative way to go about it that will let you get done what you want to get done. It’s the most like a computer any smart phone has been.

Obviously Android is much more open than any other platform on the market, but it doesn’t go as far as a fresh install of Debian or Slackware. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, this is ultimately a cell phone. You’re not able to build the device yourself using any hardware and form factor that you’d like (well, you can load Android onto x86 devices among other things, but I haven’t seen any homebrew phones yet), you’re using a device built to maintain a certain level of user friendliness and reliability. If I could break Android as easily as I could break a Linux install (or even a Windows install really) I don’t think I’d be quite as in love with it as I am. I’m extremely satisfied with the degree of openness allowed by the operating system, and now that the Native Developer Kit is coming out we can only see the level of openness and quality of applications increasing.

After the break, Scott also gives his impressions of the G1, which he now owns. That’s right: two phones, one week. Is it any surprise, then, that this week offered nothing in the way of posts?

P.S. This post was created entirely on the G1.

The Mobile Ping - Podcast 09 (.mp3)

For iTunes Users

And that about sums it up. We have a Palm Pre that Eric has been living with for a few days and has obviously mixed feelings about, to the point that he can barely explain what he’s feeling. Also in other news, this device called the iPhone 3GS came out, a few of you might have heard about it, nothing big, we talk a little bit about it.

The Mobile Ping - Podcast 08 (.mp3)

For iTunes Users

The Mobile Ping - Podcast 07 (.mp3)

For iTunes Users

The Mobile Ping - Podcast 06 After Smoke Break (.mp3)

For iTunes Users