Category Archives: Technology

Android, Entertainment, Music, Technology

Amazon vs Google – The quest for the MP3 market

Amazon just released “Cloud Drive” and “Cloud Player” for Android.  It lets you stream your music from the cloud.  5GB of cloud space is free, and you get upgraded to 20GB if you buy just one MP3 album from them in 2011 (from this date forward).  All future purchases of Amazon MP3 music are stored in their cloud space for free, so if this is the only place you get your music, like me, this could be great.

But unfortunately they’re not including everyone’s previous purchases, which is very sad.  I have purchased hundreds of albums from them over the past few years, so this would have been awesome, so unfortunately this is a deal breaker for me.  I have over 250GB of music, so they’re saying I would need to purchase a t least a block of 200GB of cloud space for $200 per year!  Or worse yet, their next plan up, which is 500GB for $500 a year! Yikes!  So it looks like I’m sticking to streaming my own music from home for now.

Google, however, is about to release “Google Music”, which promises to offer streaming of your own music from home, as well as from the cloud, and they’ll have their own MP3 store to purchase new music!  This sounds pretty promising, and if it works out, I might just have to switch to purchasing my music from Google instead of Amazon in the future!  We’ll see.

Android, Technology

New Amazon Appstore for Android

The new Amazon Appstore opened up this week for Android users, and it’s great!  They’re giving away a paid app of their choice every day too.  This means that if you visit the Appstore once a day you can “purchase” their free app of the day and it’s yours just as if you purchased it for its full price!  Download it any time, uninstall it, or reinstall it whenever you like.  This sure is an awesome way to get everyone to use their new service.  I’ll certainly be stopping by once a day, no doubt.

Much like the Android Market, the Appstore shows you categories of apps, you can search for specific ones, or browse through their sections.  It also has a nice “save for later” option that remembers a list of apps for you so you can come back later and look at them some more.  The Android Market doesn’t have anything like this.  Google should consider something similar though, it’s a great feature.

Installing the Appstore itself was a bit tricky though.  It’s not an app you can just download in the Market.  I guess maybe because it’s a direct competitor to Market itself..?  It’s easy to find though, if you google it or search Amazon’s website for it on your Android.  You won’t be able to download it at first though, unless you’ve changed a setting on your phone to allow downloads from unknown sources.  This is located in Menu >> Settings >> Applications >> Unknown sources.  Check this option to allow installation of non-Market applications.  Then you can download the app (apk file) from Amazon.  I’m not sure if all Androids act the same at this point, but mine simply allowed me to download the apk file.  After that nothing happened, so I loaded up a file browser (I use Astro) and opened the apk file once I found it on my SD card.  It then prompted me for the install.  After that, everything was back to normal though, with a new app called Amazon Appstore on my phone, read for me to consume a new free app every single day!  Just remember though, Androids have limited memory.  You can install most apps to SD, which saves a ton of space, but they still eat a little main memory for each application (or game) installed, and they will eventually fill up your phone.  This is why it’s so nice to still have the free app available to re-download and reinstall, even after you uninstall it.  I constantly juggle apps I want to just try out, or just play once in awhile.  Since it’s a cell phone, a network connection is always there anyway, so it’s very convenient to do anywhere.

Computers, Technology

Sometimes things work out

Dual Monitors (sorta)This week one of our monitors died.  No big surprise—EVERYTHING has been dying or breaking lately… Over the past couple weeks, Sandy’s cell phone broke, our laptop died, the PS3 died, and our expensive Harmony Remote died.   It’s like Karma knows we got our tax refund checks and wants to just eat that money up as fast as possible.  The thing is, we need that money to fix up the house in the spring so the city doesn’t fine us!  Yes, the neighborhood inspectors nailed us last season, and we have a big list of things to fix on our house and property now.

Anyway, back to the dead monitor.  I can’t stand seriously working on a PC with just one monitor.  There’s just so much I do at once, I can’t fit it onto a single monitor, or, even if I could, it gets too confusing switching back and forth between open applications and windows.  With 2 screens (minimum) I can separate things enough to work smoothly and get things done efficiently.  Just ask Randy Pausch from Carnegy-Mellon University.   Once monitor on a PC just doesn’t cut it.

So anyway, it died.  The backlight constantly flickers and repeatedly goes black, rendering it useless.  Yes, it was very old, so it’s not worth fixing.  It was just a standard, cheap 17” LCD monitor that I had broken the base off of so it would fit into the little right nitch on my desk to use as my right monitor.   So I scrapped it.  Not sure what to do next, I took some measurements and checked many vendors for monitors that would fit in that spot.  It’s not an easy task to find the FULL dimensions of a monitor (including the stand) when you need it.  Some sites provide it, but most don’t.   What to do?  I found a few monitors that came with removable stands, which would be perfect, but their size without the stand attached was then questionable.  Arrggh.

Well, another completely unrelated task that Sandy had during this whole dilemma was with a client of hers.  She needed an inexpensive TV and wanted to know if it was possible to get a new flatscreen LCD TV for as little as $100.  So I looked around and found a couple at Best Buy—one for $89.99 and one for $99.99.  She ended up choosing the $99 one, which was on sale from $150, so Sandy had to pick it up for her.

Yesterday, while the TV was sitting at home waiting for Sandy to deliver it to her client, I got an idea.  I wondered how something like this would fit into our desk cubby.  So I carefully removed it from it’s box and did some measuring.  It looked pretty close!  So I attached the stand and set it in place.  It fit PERFECTLY!  All of Best Buy’s smallest monitors (18”-19”) were around the same price, but none of them would fit in this space on our desk.  This TV was on sale, $50 off, so it was normally $150.  It was a 15” screen, so it was a bit smaller, but it had all the right ports—a VGA port, HDMI, and all the others.  I even had an extra AT&T box I could use on it that I haven’t used since 3 PCs ago, because I didn’t have a TV antenna or HDMI input on any of our replacement PCs.  The only other issue I could foresee would be with its resolution.  I know TVs are not quite up to the specs of monitors, so I expected the resolution to be lacking.

I went ahead and unboxed the rest of the package and set everything up.  I connected the cable box to the HDMI, and the PC to the VGA input.  Everything worked perfectly, and it has quite a nice image!  Yes, the quality is a bit less than a monitor, but I was expecting as much.  Surprisingly, however, the specs say it has a maximum resolution of 1366×768, but when I set that resolution in Windows 7 it told me that it’s not optimum and recommends 1920×1080 as the optimum resolution, and when setting the TV’s resolution to 1366×768, the monitor went black and displayed a “Not Supported” message!  I tried other resolutions, but only 1920×1080 and 1600×900 would work, so I compared the two with a standard web page displayed.  1600×900 is what my main monitor is at as optimum, and it turned out that looks exactly the same on the TV, but leaves about a 1” border around the edge of the picture area, resulting in a LOT of wasted screen space and simply eliminates the extra pixels from the 1920×1080 resolution instead of “stretching” to use the full screen.  So 1920×1080 it was.  It’s kind of bizarre that this TV is actually smaller than my main monitor, yet I have to use a higher resolution on it.  It worked well enough though, fit perfectly in its spot, and I can now optionally watch cable (or our DVR recordings) on it by simply switching from the VGA port to the HDMI port on the remote.  That’s awesome, especially since a lot of the time I will drag a Netflix browser window over to my right screen to watch a movie while I work anyway.   And 15” isn’t as small as it sounds sitting next to my 20” main display.  In fact, there’s only about a 2” height difference in the actual screen displays.    So it really goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that I then had to return to Best Buy and pick up another of these TVs for Sandy’s client.  Sometimes things work out in strange ways.  But after having so many things die unexpectedly, this seems like little consolation.

Android

Launcher Pro Plus

My Launcher Pro Plus Home Screen
My Launcher Pro Plus Home Screen

Here’s an app review for the Android.  It’s actually an interface aka “Launcher” for Android, so it’s not really an app I guess.  It’s LauncherPro Plus, by Federico Carnales.  The version I’m currently using for this review is 0.8.2.  LauncherPro is based on the standard Android Launcher interface, which is included with all Android phones, though most of them also include an alternate interface designed by the phone manufacturer or cellular carrier you have.  My phone is the HTC Desire from US Cellular, so it came with the HTC Sense launcher preinstalled and set as the default launcher.  The original Launcher app is always in there, but rarely is it set as the default when you get a new phone.

Anyway,  Launcher Pro is based on the original interface, and Launcher Pro Plus goes even further by adding a lot of nice features on top of that, basically creating a third level of enhancements.  Many of these enhancements are “HTC Sense-like” too, so if you like some elements of HTC Sense, but long for something better, this might just be the interface for you.  Basically, LauncherPro is like Launcher on steroids.  There are a ton of options behind the interface, including the ability to increase the number of home screens to 7, rearrange your screens easily, “pin” any screen as the default “home” screen, change scrolling speeds, customize your doc icons, etc. etc., most of which are available in the free LauncherPro version.  What “Plus” adds, however, are several features I really like, and am really addicted to now.

The vertical-scrolling app tray
The vertical-scrolling app tray

These include all of the fancy HTC-only widgets that were previously only available on phones with the HTC Sense interface.  Federico has basically copied the interface

and functionality of Sense’s widgets, enhanced them even more, and put them in “Plus”!  In addition to these, you also get many custom doc icons–several with the ability to display “counts” on them–which are round red balls with numbers in them.  These numbers alert you to the number of new G-mails you have, text messages, and/or missed calls you’ve received.  So at a glance you instantly know what’s waiting to be checked.

As do most other launchers, it also offers full support for themes–of which there are plenty to choose from in the Market–and the ability to backup all of your screens and settings at any time.  In addition, there are also some experimental and memory-intensive options which can further enhance (or degrade) your experience, depending on the model, memory and processor speed of your particular phone.  It’s great that these are all optional too, so you can choose exactly how you want your own phone to work.

Widget options
Widget options

Overall I’d have to say that I haven’t had any real issues with Launcher Pro Plus since installing it, and it hasn’t crashed for me at all.  Its speed is great, it’s very vast, and never lags unexpectedly.  It can slow down a bit when I’m doing a lot of multitasking ofmultiple apps, but that’s to be expected.  It certainly performs tons better than ADW Launcher, which I previously purchased and used before I found Launch Pro Plus.  ADW had some nice features as well, but it crashed frequently and was pretty sluggish most of the time, so I eventually gave up on it.  I really like Launcher Pro Plus, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to HTC Sense.

Android

Google Maps 5 coming soon to Android devices

Version 5 of Google Maps has just been announced for Android.  It will be released “in a matter of days,” and most Android users should be able to download it free, at that point.

Coming with the Maps update will be the end of tiling.  Whoohoo!  It will use vectors, which brings the ability to see maps in 3D (see screenshot). For anyone who has used Google Earth on their Android device knows, Maps will now let you tilt and rotate any map with your fingers.

Equally as notably is the addition of offline caching, making those long trips to areas with data deadzones less scary. Besides keeping the map/route on file, the offline cache will also be able to reroute if you miss that exit and don’t have continuous data. The update will be available for all Android devices with 2.2, and possibly for all with 2.1, as well. I have a 2.1 device, so I’m a little nervous at this point… I REALLY want to be able to use this update!! I use Google Navigation daily.

Android, iPhone/iPod Touch

Going Subsonic

Ok, MOG is out.  After a thorough analysis of the app and the service itself, I have decided to drop it.  I have found several services now that offer the same “on-demand” music streaming, all have millions of songs, and offer their own variation of the same features.  These include Rhapsody, Napster, and a few others.  So there really isn’t a lack of this ability available, and they are all around the same price, about $10/month, so they compete fairly evenly.

One of the hitches with MOG (and probably the others as well) is that you can only be logged into one device at a time. Since all of our family’s devices use the same accounts, I set it up on all of them, but if I start MOG on my phone and Kevin happens to be listening to it, Kevin gets bumped off the service, and vice versa. Very annoying. At least one of the other services offer an upgraded tier of $15/month for use on up to 3 devices at once, so at least there’s an option out there, but still pricey.  Also, the MOG app on the Android seems a bit buggy. I often get bumped off of the service when I know Kevin and Sandy aren’t using it, and other times it just stops streaming mysteriously and hangs.

Since I’m a long-time Slacker subscriber, and still am, I’ll stick with it for awhile and see how their on-demand service works when it finally comes out (if ever).  Meanwhile, I’ve discovered an amazing alternative! SUBSONIC! It’s a music streaming server (yes, I said “server” not “service”) that you install on your own computer, and it streams your entire music collection (and much more!) to any of your devices! Since everything is served from your own PC, you don’t have to rely on any other service for your access.  And the price?  Free for 2 weeks, then you have to make one small donation (of any amount) to get a permanent license.  That’s it, and you never pay another fee.  The Android app is free too, and written by the same developer who wrote the Subsonic server itself.  The iPod apps (there are two or three currently available for the iPhone) are around $4.99, but that’s a one-time fee as well.  These were written by other developers, and I think they may support a few other services and/or servers as well as Subsonic.  The one we’re using on our iPods is “Z-Subsonic”.

So Subsonic gives us all full access to everything we have on every device we use, for a total of a few dollars!  It works great, and I have yet to see the apps crash–on any device.  The apps give you a lot of options too–you can adjust the amount of space to reserve for your cache, you can set how many songs to pre-cache, etc., and even subscribe to Podcasts on the server and it handles downloading those automatically and serving them up on your devices.  You can even setup as many user accounts on the server as you want, each with their own restrictions (or full admin freedom), and use those accounts on any device as you want to.

It is really nice (and comforting) to know we can be anywhere–even right at the desk on our home PC serving up the music–and we can drop an iPod into a sound dock and stream any album or playlist we want, instantly.  No more sync’ing, iTunes, or space issues on any of the devices!

Android, iPhone/iPod Touch

The Woz Picks Android to Beat the iPhone

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak thinks Android will eventually beat the iPhone as a mobile-phone platform in much the same way Windows computers squeezed Apple’s market share in the PC market, he said in an interview with a Dutch newspaper.  In an interview with De Telegraaf reporter Alfred Monterie, Wozniak said that Android will become the dominant smartphone platform. He didn’t write off the iPhone completely, however, saying it “has very few weaknesses” and that, “when it comes to quality, iPhone is leading.” While he admitted the quality of Android phones hasn’t been consistent, he championed the platform, saying “Android phones have more features” and that eventually the quality of the experience will match iOS. Full story

Android

Why Netflix isn’t on Android yet

I’ve been drooling for Netflix to finally come out for Android. Today I found out why it’s not out yet. I guess Netflix is concerned with how “open” the Android platform is. They are now working with different solutions based on each of the different handset manufacturers. Which means, when it DOES come out, there will be a different version for each different Android phone, which, in turn, means it will take much longer to come out than expected, depending on which manufacturer they release it for in what order. Sounds pretty messy, and could hurt Netflix in the long run. I hope not though, we’re enjoying their services on every OTHER platform we have. Here’s the article.

Android

MOG

This weekend I discovered MOG.  MOG is a streaming music service similar to Slacker and Pandora, with a few big differences: With MOG you can search for and find specific songs and albums and even download them to your device! I have been waiting since March, when I heard Slacker was going to come out with this type of “On Demand” music feature, but they never did.  I hear it’ll be coming out “any day now” for Slacker, but I’m still waiting.  Apparently MOG has been around for several years, I guess I just never heard of it.  Ironically, I found it while reading the Slacker forums today, to find out when Slacker will be releasing their version of the service.  I couldn’t find a date, but several users mentioned that they were using MOG now, and hoped to switch to Slacker when Slacker On-Demand comes out.  It’s a relief to know it’s been out a long time too–it makes me a little less nervous about paying for a service I haven’t used much yet

So for now, MOG is it I guess. It’s $9.99 a month, so it isn’t cheap, but having instant access to virtually everything out there is exciting for me, and probably cheaper than what I normally spend on regular music throughout the year.  They have millions of songs, albums, and radio stations, and it’s great when an artist or song just pops up in my head and now there’s a place to go to instantly find and play that song or album.

They have apps for iPhone, iPod and Android, so I’m using the iPod and Android apps on my two devices and Kevin has the iPod app on his iPod now too.  The ability to download albums and songs is great too–especially when I’m somewhere (like in the basement of a hospital) with no cellular connection.  Though I have been a huge Slacker user for awhile, it looks like MOG is going to be my new main player for now, at least until Slacker finally releases their version if this service.  At that point I’ll have to compare feature sets and decide which to keep and which to cancel.

For the next two weeks, however, I’m in a free trial of MOG though, so it’s even sweeter knowing I’m not paying for it yet.  I’ll be giving it a thorough workout too, making sure it’ll do everything I need it to before I start shelling out any money for it.

Android

My Photos Live

Time for an app review.  This week I found “My Photos Live” by “Sandroids” for the Android.  This is a great app for displaying your photos, whether they are on your Android phone, on Flickr, on Facebook, or even spread out on all three of these sources!  I had been looking for something like this for awhile and I tried several apps that do this in different ways, but I think this one has done it right.  It offers many transitions to choose from (used when changing photos in the slideshow) as well as a “random” setting to choose a random transition every time it changes, but the feature I love the most is its ability to make this slideshow your Live Wallpaper!  I set the change slide time to very long (which, on this app, is one or two minutes) and make it my Live Wallpaper, so whether the phone is locked, or I’m on one of my screens, the wallpaper changes to any one of my thousands of photos on Flickr every minute or two.  You can even choose a specific photoset from your Flickr collections if you like, or simply select all of them, as I did.  Another nice feature is “Slideshow Mode”.  This simply sets the app to automatically start the slideshow whenever you plug in your phone.  Nice, since your phone usually isn’t doing anything anyway when it’s plugged in for charging (besides playing your music, as I do with mine), so it’s nice to have an instant mini “photo frame” going while it sits on your desk.  This app is available for free, without any restrictions I believe, but a 99-cent “donate” version is also available to support the developer, Sandroids, which is what I did after trying out the free version for awhile.  I highly recommend the pay version of ANY app that you find useful, especially when they’re as good as this one and they’re only asking for a very small amount, like 99 cents.

Android

Cell phone bliss

I started typing this post on 9/12/10.  I finally decided it’s time to post it.  Looking back, I guess I should have posted it as I wrote it, and just posted updates after that, so it was always current.  Oh well.  Anyway, here goes:

I’ve done a lot of research on smartphones recently, on a quest for getting my first one.  Yeah, I know, a geek without a smartphone?!? What took me so long?? Well, money, of course, is the first consideration.  It costs more money, both monthly and upfront, for a smartphone, so there’s that.  Then there’s the Operating System.  Do I want Apple (iPhone), Android (all providers other than apple), or something else?  I quickly narrowed my choices down to iPhone or Android.  Both are excellent operating systems, and Android is available on many different phones and carriers. And besides, since I’m now a card-carrying member of Appleholics Anonymous, one of their 12 steps is to own, and loyally use daily, a non-Apple device.  So here I go.

My choices of phones were quickly narrowed down to one phone after I checked with my current cellular provider.  It turns out I’m only a few months into a 2-year contract, and there’s a hefty “early termination” fee if I leave my contract.  They’re willing to work with me though, if I want to re-up my contract for 2 more years and get a smartphone.  Thay have two Android phones to choose from, the best being the HTC Desire.  I reviewed the specs and they looked pretty nice, with a few exceptions.  The primary reason I leaned toward Android over an iPod at first, was the openness of the system and the fact that the new Android version (2.2 Frozen Yogurt–aka FroYo) offered wifi tethering and the ability to install apps on a MicroSD card.  I was excited about these two options.  Wifi tethering would cure another problem we keep having.  We get to a remote location–either Kevin and I, Sandy and I, or all three of us–then discover that there’s no wifi available, so we can’t check in anywhere, check our mail, or play a round of Words With Friends, so what to do except twiddle our thumbs???  But Android version 2.1, which my provider’s HTC Desire comes with, doesn’t have those features yet.  So I called my provider.  My first call to them resulted in them agreeing to make an exception to renew my contract and allow me to upgrade my phone again.  They couldn’t tell me much about the Android version, so I explained what I had read.  They still didn’t know what, if any, upgrade options were possible on the Desire.

‘, ‘

I thought about it a bit and decided to stop in at one of their stores in town the next day.  I played around with the phone for a few minutes to get a feel for it and look at the menus and features.  I asked the salesperson about Android 2.1 and asked if I could upgrade to 2.2.  She wasn’t sure so she checked with her manager.  He said “no no no, you can’t upgrade it, you have to use the operating system it comes with.”  Now, I’m not sure if he misunderstood what I was asking, but I didn’t appreciate the way he said this.  I told her I wasn’t going to upgrade at all if this was the case, and I left the store.

Further research on the Internet that evening didn’t help much.  A few postings by other users mentioned that the upgrade to 2.2 for my carrier hasn’t been released, but was expected in the near future, though no definite date was quoted and no source of this information was provided.  My carrier has nothing posted on their website, even in their FAQs about Android.  So today, very frustrated and torn as to whether I should take the plunge or not, I called my carrier’s tech support again.  I explained the situation and asked if there was anyone there who could provided some technical information on Android for this specific carrier.  I was placed on hold for about 20 minutes and then a support tech picked up.  He seemed very knowledgeable about Android and the HTC Desire, but said basically the same thing I was told before–the Android 2.2 upgrade hasn’t been approved yet for this carrier, and he’s not sure if the wifi tethering feature will be supported or not.  I explained that someone else–the lady I talked to before him–said that wifi tethering is definitely not supported by them and they are not responsible for any additional charges resulting from attempting to use this feature.  He couldn’t elaborate, only repeated that they wouldn’t know more until the release is actually approved by the carrier.  I explained that wifi tethering is a pretty big tipping point for me upgrading to this phone, and he explained that the phone has a ton of excellent features even as it is now, without the wifi tethering, and it does have USB tethering right now, but if wifi tethering is that much of a factor for me, he suggests I hold off until I can get more information on the upgrade after it is approved for this phone.  I thanked him for his time and help and let him go.  It was nice to finally talk to someone who understands what I’m looking for, even though he couldn’t really provide any additional information for me.

So here I sit, wondering what my provider is going to do regarding the Android 2.2 upgrade on this phone.  It’s Sunday September 12, 2010.  It should be very interesting to see what happens.  I’ll complete this post when I either know more or have a smartphone in my hands.

9/25/10 – I now own an Android phone.  I went with the HTC Desire.  It’s not the best Android phone out there (Jay has that–the HTC Evo 4G), but it’s pretty close.  I’ve had it about a week, and I’m quite impressed.  I think I’ll stick with it.  And I’ll keep my iPod too.  Just like the XBox 360 and the PS3, it’s fun to be able to play on “both sides of the fence”.  I get to learn all of the differences of each platform, all the advantages and disadvantages of them, and maybe I can even help someone in cyberspace keep better informed.  So here’s my impressions so far:

1. The touch screen is far more sensitive than the iPod Touch. Just holding the phone tightly seems to be able to heat up a few screen edge areas (where my flesh is just above it) enough to trigger a selection sometimes.  It’s not a problem now that I know I’m doing it and I can back off a little, but it was pretty confusing at first.

2. It’s Android 2.1, which isn’t so bad, but I’ll be upgrading to 2.2 as soon as it’s available from my carrier. The ability to install apps to the SD Card is extremely critical.  This phone came with so many pre-installed (and good) apps that the internal memory was nearly full before I installed anything myself!  I have to juggle apps now, uninstalling those I’m not currently using, just to install what I want to use.  I have tons of space left on my SD Card, so this makes little sense.  Android 2.2 should solve this problem completely.  And wifi tethering is just that much more of a bonus coming with 2.2

3. AT&T (not my carrier) disables the ability to download apps from outside the Android Market on all of its Android phones.  This is disappointing, because one of the main Android benefits is it’s “openness”.  It’s an open source operating system, and everyone is free to develop for it and publish software for it, either in the Android Market store or outside, via their own website or others.  Locking it to just the Market, however, seems like a pretty big restriction, pushing it close to the Apple model.  I think one big reason a lot of people go with Android is to get away from that model, even if it’s just to be different, and even if you don’t necessarily download apps from outside the Market, it’s the principal of the thing.  I would think this would discourage a lot of potential AT&T customers and drive them away from the AT&T cellular service.  Then again, already having the entire exclusive iPhone market (for the moment), I guess if any company was going to take this risk it would be AT&T.

4. Android has TRUE multitasking.  Not the fake “application in suspended-state” multitasking that the iPod and iPhone have, this is the real thing.  You can start something in an app (like Slacker’s station caching) that takes awhile to process, then just move on to another app and the processing still continues in the background.  In fact, the top “notification bar” displays an icon for that app, just so remind you that it’s still running.  Yes, it does slow down your other tasks, but that’s real multitasking.

5. Ringtones are unbelievable.  And free.  There’s no need to pay for a ringtone ever again, thanks to abundant apps that let you record any sound and use it as your ringtone, and other free apps that let you download millions (literally) of ringtones that others have already made.  I could spend years just trying to listen to all of them one by one.  Search for anything that interests you and you instantly find hundreds of ringtones to choose from.

6. Live Wallpapers.  Android wallpapers can move.  I must admit, I’ve never been a fan of animated wallpapers since Microsoft added Live Video Wallpaper to Windows and offered it as part of the “Ultimate” version of their operating system.  It slowed down the PC tremendously on many occasions and could often render it unusable, performing so slow.  I never use it any more.  But on Android it doesn’t seem to slow anything down.  Perhaps it’s just done right from the ground up this time…?  You can get Live Wallpaper in just about any flavor, just like ringtones, and there are many included on the phone.

7. GPS Rules! – Having only had the iPod Touch and not an iPhone before, GPS on a phone is new to me.  So far, it’s been a very fun, eye-opening experience.  For one thing, I think Google has really done some amazing things.  For one thing, Google Navigator (totally free) is the best navigation app I’ve seen so far, and I’ve tried several of them already, including the exclusive Navigator Plus (included with the HTC Desire) others.  You can type or speak your destination and it instantly locates it (very accurate!) and starts navigating. Google speaks your directions (even much more clearly than all the others), maps flow very smoothly as you travel, and you even get a streetview of your destination as you arrive. Another must-have app–for me, anyway–is My Tracks.  It’s another Google app that actually RECORDS your journey on Google Maps and lets you save and share those maps as well as provide you with detailed trip information, including distance, time, max speed, etc.. Amazing stuff.

8. Camera. Ah, the things you can do with a camera in your phone!  Taking pictures and videos is just the beginning.  Try Google Goggles.  Take a picture of ANYTHING and Goggles goes out to the web and finds it.  If it can’t find it, it will display images very similar to yours.  It reacognizes any logos, text, products, etc., in the photo very nicely.  I have heard that it has the capability to also recognize people, but this functionality has been disabled due to privacy concerns.

9. More Camera.  There are an abundance of applications that allow you to scan barcodes out there. Most of them do a great job of identifying the product scanned, but the awesome ones will even show you the cheapest place to buy it!  This is great for shopping!  I’ll have to go with Sandy sometime.  Another neat camera feature is face recognition.  As an example of a good use for this, Photofunia is a great free app that lets you choose from hundreds of fake “cutouts”, for example a very muscular bodybuilder, a magazine cover with an executive on it, etc., then take a photo of someone, and it detects the person’s face in the photo and places it into the cutout image as best it can.  The results are often very amusing and sometimes convincing!  It does a nice job with it, especially considering its price!

10. Widgets.  The Android has widgets.  These are tiny applications that are presented in small areas of your screen that always stay open and running, just like Windows Gadgets.  For example, Weather, music and photo widgets are very popular.  All are available in various sizes and styles, and dozens of widgets are included with the HTC Desire.  These can eat up screen space though, space otherwise used for your application icons.  The HTC Desire has 7 screens though, so you have plenty of space, considering how many (or few) apps you can have on your screens.

11. All Apps.  Even with 7 virtual screens–scrollable much like the iPod and iPhone–the Android still has an “All Apps” screen that displays every application installed on the phone, sorted A-to-Z.  This is great, and makes it easy to find any application, even if you’ve forgotten it’s name.  You also have the ability to search, as the iPod and iPhone can, by name, and it searches your phone instantly as well as optionally searching Google automatically.  You can also search by voice whenever you want, with a “microphone” key right on the keyboard.  You can even call someone, compose & send an e-mail, listen to music, etc. etc. etc… all with this same search function.

12. Lastly, Google Skymap is simply amazing.  Using GPS, it provides a live skymap of the exact stars in the area of the sky it is pointed at.  You can see all of the constellations, planets, and even the horizon, right there in front of you.  This is quite fascinating, and certainly a must-have for any astronomy buffs.  Totally free, of course.  I’m pretty sure any app with nearly the same capabilities in the Apple Store will cost your a few dollars or more.

13. Ok, I lied. THIS is the last point.  One final app to brag about. Tasker.  This is a really cool app, and it’s a tinkerer’s (aka geek’s) dream.  It’s used to perform tasks on your phone, triggers by events.  The tasks and the events that can trigger them number in the hundreds.  You can automate just about every function of the phone you can think of.  For example, you can make a task as simple as opening an application automatically at 7:00am, or a task as complicated as automatically switching off your GPS, Wifi, Cell data, and muting your phone when you get to work.  Actually they can get quite a bit more complicated that than even, but you get the idea.  It’s amazing, to say the least, and it really has the potential to turn your “Smart” phone into a “Super” phone. As an example of a practical application of it, I recently discovered an embarrassing side-effect of using an Android with my iPod speaker dock at work.  When I disconnect the headphone cable connected to the aux jack on the dock after I power off the dock, my playing music blasts loudly through the phone’s speaker for a few seconds as I panic to turn down the volume and/or pause the music, whichever I can get to quicker.  Tasker to the rescue! After this happened a few times I realized Tasker can fix this.  So I created a task to detect when the headphones are unplugged and, at that point turn the volume down and close the music application.  It works perfectly.

Android RULES!

iPhone/iPod Touch

Netflix adds instant streaming to iPhone & iPod!

Netflix has finally added instant streaming to the iPod and iPhone!  Last Thursday (somehow I missed this last week) they release the app in the app store.  You can now use your iPod or iPhone to watch any movie or video available on Netflix Instant!  This is huge for me–I’ve been drooling for this since the iPad was first released.  Netflix had the app available for the iPad several months ago when the iPod was first released, but they held back on releasing the app for the iPod and iPhone for some reason, until now.  My guess is that they made an exclusivity deal with Apple so they could sell more iPads for the first few months of its release.  Arrg.  Anyway, it’s here now, and I’m much happier.  I now have thousands of movies and TV shows available almost anywhere I am, instantly!–WITHOUT having to jailbreak my iPod.

Internet, News

Facebook redeems itself

I just discovered an awesome option on Facebook that just prevented me from totally quitting the whole thing! I was getting so fed up of everyone’s dozens of “Mafia Wars” and “Farmville” status updates scrolling everything actually POSTED off of my Facebook page, and last night I was ready to just quit Facebook altogether because of it. Then, this morning I did some looking around and found that if you hover in the upper right corner of one of those Farmville postings there’s a big X. Click it and you get several options. The first two are “Hide ‘John Doe’ and Hide ‘Application Name’, where ‘John Doe’ and the ‘Application Name’ are the actual names of the respective user and application you’re viewing. Click “Hide Farmville” and you no longer see Farmville updates on your page!! Whoohoo! It’s such a relief that I don’t have to quit altogether!

Now, another complaint I have with Facebook is that I was unable to post the above paragraph to Facebook.  Why?  Because it was twice as long as a Facebook posting can be.  I just found out the hard way that Facebook postings are limited to just over 400 characters.  The paragraph above is over 800.  Just another plus for having your own blog.  Now I just need to get my blog to auto-post my entries to Facebook for me… I know it’s possible, I just need to find the right plugin…

Android, iPhone/iPod Touch

Slacker

My latest obsession on the iPod is Slacker Radio (often used when I’m playing Words With Friends). I’ve tried a lot of different radio apps on the iPod. Several of them I liked, but a big feature that I found with Slacker that kept me using it is it’s station caching. Since I use the Touch and not the iPhone, Im not always connected to a network. This alone eliminates the functionality of most radio apps, but with Slacker’s station caching, all I have to do is choose a cached station in Slacker and I can play everything just as if I were connected to a network. It can take several minutes to cache a station, but that’s expecte. From the details I’ve read, Slacker will cache 100 songs for a station initially, and gradually increase the cache as you listen to the station and refresh the cache. They do some nice shuffling in the background apparently, because I can listen to a station over and over and it seems I always hear songs I haven’t heard before, yet I still sometimes hear replays, but most of the time it’s only for songs I’ve “hearted”, which you do when you hear a favorite you like. When you refresh your cached stations (you have to do them all at once, you can’t pick and choose which ones to cache and any given time) it seems to take longest to re-cache stations you’ve listened to since you last cached, so I would guess it’s dumping the songs you’ve banned, adding more new songs, and syncing your listening preferences with the Slacker servers. Every time I visit the website on my PC it shows me everything I’ve listen to, so it certainly “remembers” everything. Other features include many curated stations from Slacker, including a couple of very good Comedy channels (one Explicit, one ‘clean’), search features to find exactly the artists or songs you want to hear, the ability to build your own custom stations, bios, lyrics, and reviews of the songs and artists as you play them, large thumbnail of the current song playing (WHOOHOO! Love it!) and much more. A few of these features only work in “Slacker Plus”, the subscription service, but that’s expected. Since the service is only $4.99 a month (or $3.99 a month if you pay yearly), it’s well worth the price for the features you get, in my opinion. There is also an web version of Slacker, which is actually much easier to use for building custom stations than the iPod is, and fortunately every station and favorite you save immediately appears on both your PC and your iPod, since it saves to your Slacker account itself. They also list many stand-alone digital radio devices that now support Slacker, which is a good indication of their stability as a company. Overall, I highly recommend Slacker as a music streaming service, it ROCKS. Here’s some screenshots of it from my iPod, and here’s the Slacker website

iPhone/iPod Touch

CLZ Movies

Due to my infrequent posting here, I think I’ll start posting a little about one of my favorite iPod apps each week. So, to kick it off, the first one is CLZ Movies from Collectorz.com. I have owned and used Movie Collector for the PC for several years. It allows me to easily catalog all of my DVDs and provides a vast amount of detail for each movie I add. All I have to do to add a movie is type in the title or a portion of it. Movie Collector then grabs everything about it off of the Internet and all I have to do is add my index # to it and any personal information I want, and that’s it. I can print lists of all my movies””with or without images. Kevin prefers them with the images, I prefer them without, simply because it saves ink and makes the complete list seem a lot shorter.

Anyway, the CLZ Movies app ($9.99) is a companion to Movie Collector. CLZ Movies allows you to instantly look up any of your movies and find out everything about them. For Kevin and I, the most important feature is the ability to instantly find out what index number a movie is. We use that number to sort our movies, so with it we can tell right away where a movie is located…IF a particular someone put it back in the proper order, if you know what I mean. It provides both a listing by title (with tiny thumbnail images) or a image-only list that’s kind of fun to fly through, if you like finding movies by their box art. This is Kevin’s favorite way. You can sort the list by title, index #, or year, list them by format (DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.), by genre, etc.

Exporting your list from Movie Collector is very simple and straightforward, and pretty quick, even with hundreds of movies. It’s a pretty simple app, actually, and it works very well. It gives us one more reason to grab the iPod instead of jumping on the computer and loading up Movie Collector just to find one of our movies to watch. I just wish they’d expand the built-in search in the app to include actors, directors, etc., instead of just words in the title of the movie. I’m sure there’ll be updates down the road though, there always are. Oh, and here’s some screenshots:

iPhone/iPod Touch

Confessions of an iPod Touch junkie

I’m hooked. Totally addicted. I confess. Since I purchased an iPod Touch, I have become one of the millions of “digital zombies” out there everywhere–head slumped forward, both hands clutching a small device, thumbs moving frantically over the device… you’ve seen ’em, they’re everywhere. Totally immersed in whataever they’re doing. I hear most of them are texting, but I’m not. At least not yet. I’m hooked on the games at the moment. And the music. And the police radio. And e-mail. And everything else, except texting. I have neglected my website, my photo albums (I still have plenty of Arizona Trip photos to go through and post), and I’m getting behind on my chores at home. The fish in the aquarium are starting to look at me funny, as if to say, “Hey, man, we’re swimmin’ in poop here, ya know! What’s the deal?”

The game I’ve become the most addicted to, righty now at least, is called “Flight Control“. Simple game, and I remember playing another one exactly like it on one of my old Atari computers way back when. It’s an air traffic controller game. You’re viewing a map from above and you’re the air traffic controller for the area. You need to guide each plane and helicopter to their appropriate destinations as they enter and exit your area, hopefully avoiding an air disaster along the way. This game also takes this a step further by adding an optional multiplayer mode. If you play multiplayer, each person is in charge of their own adjacent air space, and each will have to direct aircraft to their own runways as well as passing them off to the other player’s air space. The game ends instantly when two aircraft collide. Gee, I wonder why, it’s only a small mistake… Anyway, I don’t know if it’s because I played it years ago and I’m thrilled to be reliving a part of my childhood, or what, I just gotta keep playing to try to get a little bit further and get a higher rank. That aside though, I’m finding the overall usefulness of the Touch to be awesome. I can see how the iPhone would be even that much MORE useful, since you have a connection pretty much everywhere instead of just wifi, and there’s a bunch more you can do with it, but I just can’t afford the extra monthly cost yet. The Touch is a great compromise though, having many of the same features without the monthly commitment. Maybe down the road a bit…like when my current cellular contract expires. So there ya go. A blog entry. Took care of that problem, didn’t I? Now back to my airplanes…