Android Apps

Slacker Launches Slacker Premium Radio with On-Demand Access to Music Library

I’m a huge fan of Slacker Radio but I have to admit, it has been a little long in the tooth lately. I mean, they still haven’t got an iPad app which means you need to use the Slacker iPhone app at 2X resolution on your iPad. Ugly!! Moreover, services like RDIO have made selective music streaming seamlessly ease while Slacker has kept to their same old model. Well, Slacker is hitting a milestone today with the release of a new iPad app AND Slacker Premium, a service for selectively streaming the music you want when you want it! So…


Retro Camera Android App Review

I recently noticed an influx of funky old-timey photos on Facebook.  After asking around, it appears that most people I know are using Retro Camera. According to Urbian (the developer), the app lets you take “delicious old-school pics your friends will drool over” and it delivers an “off-the-hip analog look.” Now, in general I consider myself to be pretty cool, but I am a far cry from a hipster.  I own neither over-sized 1980s glasses nor a t-shirt depicting three wolves howling at the moon.  Regardless, I felt compelled to give it a try. I installed it on my Droid…


DoubleTwist Brings AirPlay to Android

I really like Apple’s AirPlay which allows you to use your Mac or iOS device to stream video or music to an Apple TV, powered speakers connected to an AirPort Express or one of the growing number of AirPlay enabled speaker systems. (In fact we have reviews of two such systems on the way.) I have expanded the “reach” of AirPlay in my home so that it is now available in four different rooms. I have, however, resisted jumping fully in because I don’t want to be completely and totally locked into Apple’s ecosystem. (Like I’m not totally locked in…


Google Docs for Android Review

Have you ever wanted to make a quick note or change to a document on the go? Many folks swear by Evernote, but sadly it is blocked by my work so I stick with Google Docs. So when a native Android app arrived, I hopped right on it. So far I have only messed around a bit, but have a clear impression. The Hype: Create, edit, upload and share your documents with the Google Docs app. * Designed for Android to save you time finding your docs * Edits to your documents appear to collaborators in seconds * Make quick…


Spring Cleaning: If an App Doesn’t Work with Evernote or Dropbox? Buh-Bye!

There are specific iPad applications that are key to my productivity day in and day out, and the “qualities” they need to have if I am to use them has evolved over time. Looking back over the ways in which they have changed in the last year or so, I realized that there is a specific pattern to those applications that have become more central to my work and daily life and those that were once useful but have fallen off the island. Strikingly, these changes have less to do with the applications themselves and more to do with secondary…


The HTC HD2: A WinMo Story with an Android Happy Ending

When the EU model of the HD2 came out in late 2009, it was one of the coolest phones I had ever seen. Knowing it was coming to the US a few months later, I had to decide if I was going to ditch my Mytouch and pick one up. The hardest part about doing that was that the HD2 still ran Windows Mobile 6.5. If you ever had that OS, or if you still have it now, then you know that there is much to be desired with that operating system, and it should for all intents and purposes…


Amazon Appstore: Is Choice Good for Android Users?

Competition is always a good thing, right? I mean, the iPhone was the first true innovation in the smartphone market for years. And along came Android, which accelerated healthy competition and made all smartphones better, and therefore better for users. So why am I not very happy with the Amazon Appstore, at least at the moment? The promise of the Amazon Appstore sounds great, at least on paper. Adding another option for a store for consumers to buy Android apps sounds like a win-win situation, but in practice, I don’t think that it is all that it is thought to…


Google Plays “Hide the Honeycomb”

I am not a developer or a computer science person, so everything beyond the basic user experience is sort of like magic to me. But even as a former philosophy major, I know there’s a huge number of people out there who spend unpaid hours digging through Android’s guts to provide more services and software to the average user. And that much of that is thanks to Google being committed to open source and sharing Android with the world. Or it was… According to BusinessWeek, Google is holding back from sharing the full source code for Honeycomb with everyone who…


How to Get Zinio “Unofficially” Working on Your Android Device

If you’re like me, and you have been waiting for the official Zinio app for Android, then you’re going to have to wait a bit longer. I like to harass Zinio every once in a while on twitter about the Android app, and they usually tell me that it’s being worked on and to be patient. That’s all fine and well, but in the meantime, since I don’t have an apple device it’s really not worth buying any subscriptions because I have nothing to read them with. Some of the members of the XDA forums found that unacceptable, so they…


Adventures in Customer Service- Zinio Edition

When the term “customer service” seems more like “customer lack-of-service” we like to call the company in question out. We did so with regard to AT&T Wireless. We did so with Amazon’s Kindle policy too. We’ve even done so with Apple. (Although, to be fair, both Apple and Amazon are usually amazing in the Customer Service arena.) Yes, when a company lets us down we aren’t shy about saying so. We WANT others to know! But what happens when a company goes above and beyond? What happens when a company has a glitch and, rather than trying to ignore it…


Google’s Reaction to Android Exploits; Conspiracy Theory or Keeping Us Safe?

Original image courtesy of KnowYourCell If you were following mobile news over the weekend you probably saw some reports about Google remote killing some malicious apps that found their way to the market. While most were simply noting this because you may have been one of those affected users , others took some pretty hard jabs at Google for using an exploit of their own to remote into your phone and kill the apps. While this is not far off base, I think some people are taking it to an unnecessary level of conspiracy theory like ideas that Google is…


Honeycomb’s Strawman

I’ve noticed a troubling and confusing theme in reviews and comments about Google’s new OS, Honeycomb. It seems everyone thinks it’s great, but there’s an anti-Xoom, anti-Honeycomb meme that keeps appearing about the lack of Honeycomb-specific apps in the Marketplace. This is what’s called a “Straw man” argument. Rather than argue Honeycomb on its actual merits, pros and cons, they’re trotting out something that sounds awful (Honeycomb has very few apps) and using it as a distraction. Now, I can’t comment too deeply on Honeycomb, but I’ve played around with Android on a tablet with a rooted NOOKcolor, and I…


SafeWallet and SafeWallet Desktop (Android) Review

It seems like everything in life has a login,or needs a credit card or an account number. There’s tons of information to track, and you certainly don’t want to leave it open in a memo on your computer or saved casually on your phone. That’s where an app like SafeWallet comes in to help. SafeWallet, from SBSH Software, is probably familiar to anyone who came from Symbian, the iPhone or Blackberry. It’s been around for those platforms for some time, but since I have never tried it this is all new to me. Basically, the app works by creating “wallets”…


Mediafly Drives Apps for Ford Reality Show: Focus Rally America

If you are a devotee of reality TV programming you already know about this next event-related app/app-related event, The FocusRallyApps/Ford Focus Rally: America. Kicking off on American Idol and revisited this week on the season début of Amazing Race, the Focus Rally pits six two-person teams in brand-spanking new 2012 Ford Focus hatches driving around the country utilizing social networking to decipher a series of clues that will lead them to a grand prize of $100,000 and a new Ford Focus. Mediafly, a market leader in multi-screen media solutions is providing applications to extend the viewership to mobile and tablet…


Deal With SWAGG for Deals, Gifts and a Lighter Wallet

Sometime ago I moved most of my credit cards over to an application that is stored on my iPhone and my iPad. The application is highly secured and encrypted, and it allows me to have all of my credit card information with me all the time without having to carry the credit cards themselves. I love using the app, and I see myself doing this more and more. This thing is, my credit cards aren’t the only cards that I carry. I also carry an assortment of different store cards and gift cards. For example, I was recently given a…


MWC: AppUp, MeeGo, Open Source, and Tablets

The partnership between Nokia and Microsoft that was announced the other day has caused some speculation that the Intel powered AppUp store in general, and the MeeGo in particular might be the losers in this story. Helena and I spoke with Peter Biddle, General Manager to AppUp Products and Services, and he said that despite this partnership, AppUp and Meego will thrive. Proprietary systems have a place in the ecosystem, and so do open ones. Further scaling the development of flexible, open software platforms and applications for all mobile devices, Intel demonstrated a compelling new MeeGo tablet user experience to…


WritePad for Android Review: It Has the Write Stuff

[Sigh]  I miss Graffiti. I was pretty fast writing with Graffiti on my old Palm devices. I’ve never been very speedy typing with my thumbs. I carried a BlackBerry for years because that is what my employer supported, but I never was all that fast (or accurate) typing with a thumb keyboard.  The BlackBerry keyboards were great, but, you see, I’m just not all that coordinated. Of course, more recently voice recognition has gotten much better and is now being deployed for mobile devices – and I love it – but still, there are situations in which you just aren’t…


The Notion Ink Adam Unboxing and Initial Hands-On

So the day has finally come for the Notion Ink Adam to become a reality. On pre-order day I ordered myself a Pixel Qi WiFi model and my brother a LCD WiFi model. Unfortunately due to some broken hardware reported during initial shipping, mine has yet to even post a ship date. Today the LCD model arrived on our doorstep and so far I can tell you it was worth the wait. After all the bad mojo Notion Ink was experiencing, I think the tablet was well worth the wait and heartbreak, well at least as far as I can…


Scion and XLR8R Update City Guide App

Here is a bit of info Gear Diary received recently regarding a Scion-related app update. It is not a Scion owner-specific app, rather it’s one that seeks to enhance the lifestyle of the Scion demographic. The City Guide app now offers more than 15 locales in the database, but Dallas/Fort Worth, who is hosting the big game this weekend, is not among them. I did check out the Austin guide as I was visiting the capital city recently, but the place we had dinner and drinks at (The Highball) was not listed. It was a cool restaurant/bar/nightclub/bowling alley complete with…


Tough Call: Is Apple Being Draconian & Greedy … or Is Sony Trying to Pull a Fast One?

If you track technology, you have likely seen the NYTimes article or one of the echo-articles declaring a shift in how Apple operates the app store, citing the rejection of the Sony Reader app and a vague quote from a Sony Rep as evidence. There is a lot of speculation there, but it ultimately comes down to the interpretation of two sections of a single sentence: The company has told some applications developers, including Sony, that they can no longer sell content, like e-books, within their apps, or let customers have access to purchases they have made outside the App…


Angry Birds Head Way South…to Rio!

Have you beaten all the “regular” Angry Birds levels, and even conquered Angry Birds Seasons? Do you open the game and admire all your 3-star levels and awesome high scores? Well, get your flinging fingers limbered up…because a new Angry Birds is coming this spring! Fox has the new animated movie “Rio” coming out this spring, about birds…Rovio has a game about birds. It’s a match made in casual gaming heaven! No word on the exact release time beyond March 2011, but the trailer makes me very excited for the game! Via Androidcentral