Android App Loves
Over the past few days, several of my followers have gotten new Android phones and asked for app recommendations. Here are mine with my reasons for preferring them:
Lookout: It’s an anti-virus. Yes, there are already virii for Android lurking attached to app downloads in the marketplace. As I have yet to encounter any myself and I play around a lot in the marketplace, I have a suspicion it mimics the real internet and they are probably mostly attached to the porny apps. But you never know. And removal tools are scarce so far, so infection means wiping your phone: install Lookout for protection. It can do scheduled phone scans and it scans everything you download before you open it. It runs fast and quietly which is exactly what an AV is supposed to do.
Advanced Task Killer: It can kill all apps running in the background to free up memory and save you battery life. It has an Ignore list for things you don’t ever want ended (email won’t check until you re-launch it if it’s killed, etc), and you can change its security level to even show you some of the Android engines that run unseen and are able to stop them. For instance, the Voice Search. I never use Voice Search. EVER. And yet on occasion when I open up ATK, there are four or five entries running that are Voice Search based.
Financisto: It’s a money management app, IMO the best on the market for free. Unlimited account creation, transfer between accounts. Category and project creation and selection on transactions. Budgets based on project and category entries (IE monthly gas budget is tied to Grocery category, so when you take 5 seconds to tap in what you just spent on groceries and tag it with the category, it automatically deducts that amount from your budget on the budget screen). I use it to track all of my money and this is one I really can’t live without any more. In a couple of seconds I can know how much money I have and if I can spend it safely on this or that… and it’s awesome. Comes with a tappable widget for the home screen displaying account balances & transaction / transfer shortcuts for home as well. (Do I sound like a fangirl over this app? I totally am!)
Weather: I like WeatherBug for its home screen widget and alerts (still can’t believe it’s IMO the best weather Android app while their desktop software is such shit); I use Rainy Days for animated radar maps— Rainy Days overlays the radar feeds on top of the Google Map, and it loads fast.
Calendar Pad: Extends the Google calendar in a few ways, like creating different sized widgets that when tapped launch different views of your calendar. I love the 1x1 widget because it just displays today’s date like a tiny disposable calendar, and tapping it opens up their link to your calendar— its Weekly View is WAY better than the one built into the calendar, it actually displays the entire days as squares so you can see your appointments instead of that awkward column view.
WiFi, Silent, and GPS OnOff Switches: Each one appears as an individual app in the market. Just a widget to drop on the home screen that in one or two taps turns on or off exactly what it’s named for. Handy as hell if you do that often.
Moon Widget: Displays the rise & set times of the moon as well as a graphic & percentile display of how full it is, all in a 1x1 widget on the home screen that can be set on a single lat-long location you choose or track your location and update itself. There are a lot of moon apps on the market and this is the only one I’ve found to reliably do what it says it does. I know, I’m a nerd.
Honorary Mentions: Days Until (Widget displays days until set date on home screen; 89 days till Vacation!), ColorNote (sticky note reminder app, best one IMO) GDocs (lets you download and locally view your Google docs), Urbanspoon (noms locater), Shazam (music indentifier), Tumblroid (view Tumblr dash & make new posts; can’t reblog until you buy paid version but this is the best Tumblr view app I have found so I still use it), and… I play a little Pocket Empires. My city can kick your city’s ass.
