{"id":1347,"date":"2011-04-15T12:07:52","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T19:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bibik.org\/blog\/?p=1347"},"modified":"2011-04-15T12:07:52","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T19:07:52","slug":"essential-android-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bibik.org\/index.php\/2011\/04\/15\/essential-android-applications\/","title":{"rendered":"Essential Android Applications"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Someone recently purchased an Android phone and asked what were some of the apps they should download.  I started to list a couple off but decided I better write all this down.   My list is a little nuts.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Launcher and widgets<\/strong><br \/>\nLauncher Pro Plus &#8211; Fast, extremely customizable Launcher replacement.  The pro version offers widget resizing, scrolling widgets and more.<br \/>\nFolder Organizer &#8211; Creates groups of applications, contacts or shortcuts. I use an extremely minimal homescreen that uses two widgets (showing date, time, weather and battery) and five shortcuts.  I use a swipe-up gesture on those to reveal a folder of additional shortcuts.  For the love of jebus, make sure you go into Preferences and disable the &#8220;Notify on new apps&#8221;.<br \/>\nCircle Battery Widget &#8211; The previously mentioned battery widget, customizable and clean.<br \/>\ngTabSiMiClock &#8211; The widget I use to show date, time and weather, another minimalist design.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Communication and internets<\/strong><br \/>\nAwful &#8211; For reading the SA forums.<br \/>\nBaconreader &#8211; For reading reddit.<br \/>\nGoogle Reader &#8211; I&#8217;m reading RSS feeds a couple hours a day and this is still the best app for reading them on the go.  It has offline sync support but with zero options.  It&#8217;ll sync your &#8220;most read&#8221; feeds every hour.  That works in a pinch if you don&#8217;t have internet access for a bit.<br \/>\nPlume &#8211; The only Twitter client that supports the ability to do background updates but doesn&#8217;t fire a notification when new tweets are loaded.  My Twitter timeline has about a thousand new tweets each day, I know that when a Twitter app syncs, it&#8217;s going to find new tweets.  I want my timeline to be updated at all times, I definitely don&#8217;t need to be told there are new tweets.  The rest of the interface is really usable, though I prefer the design of Twicca.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Utilities<\/strong><br \/>\nadbWireless &#8211; No need to carry around a USB cable, this allows you to debug your phone from anywhere.<br \/>\nAK Notepad &#8211; Simple notes app.<br \/>\nDropbox &#8211; If you use Dropbox, this is a must.  The app is simple as it basically just lets you upload or download a single file at a time.<br \/>\nKeePassDroid &#8211; In conjunction with Dropbox, I always have my latest password list no matter where I am.<br \/>\nOneBusAway &#8211; This is Seattle-specific, but this is a fantastic app for finding and tracking buses.<br \/>\nSwiftKey &#8211; I used to love Swype dearly, but the number of incorrect word suggestions has simply become overwhelming.  SwiftKey is slower but more accurate and thus less frustrating.<br \/>\nTitanium Backup &#8211; If you are rooted, you must install this application.  Other than the obvious ability to completely backup and restore your system, it lets you keep multiple backups of files and more.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Shopping<\/strong><br \/>\nCraigsNotifica &#8211; Let&#8217;s you set up various searches and it&#8217;ll notify you when new items are posted to CL.<br \/>\neBay &#8211; This app is pretty terrible, but I haven&#8217;t found a better app for repeated eBay searches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Someone recently purchased an Android phone and asked what were some of the apps they should download. I started to list a couple off but decided I better write all this down. My list is a little nuts. Launcher and widgets Launcher Pro Plus &#8211; Fast, extremely customizable Launcher replacement. The pro version offers widget [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bibik.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bibik.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bibik.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bibik.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bibik.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bibik.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bibik.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bibik.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bibik.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}