Android Apps

Graffiti for Android Gets Updated but Has a Bug

I sang the praises of Graffiti for Android when it first came out. It was solid and easy for quick text entry. Now Access has released an updated with the following improvements: Autocorrect Auto-capitalization Word prediction Input word learning Japanese input Effectively it goes from being a simple text entry system to a very full-featured one. It works great…except for one bug. Most text entry programs recognize if your device has a hard keyboard, and they don’t “pop up” if the keyboard is engaged. Graffiti, unfortunately, does appear even if the keyboard is extended. It makes for a difficult typing…

How to Do It Yourself!

Are You A Droid User Feeling Stung By No WiFi Tether Coming With Froyo (2.2)? Easy Root Has You Covered!

I have had the original Motorola Droid since last November just after it launched, and I have been extremely happy with the device and the Android operating system. Aside from the mediocre keyboard (which I’ve gotten used to over time) I have had an absolutely fantastic experience with the Droid – it is my constant companion, and I greatly appreciate how it has improved in many ways during the time since purchase thanks to app updates and operating system upgrades. Back in May I grabbed a Palm Pre Plus on eBay. I was going on a business trip and bringing…

News

Just In Case You Missed It: Sprint & HTC Bring Froyo to the EVO 4G

If you’ve got a Sprint HTC EVO 4G, then today you have yet another reason to feel vastly superior to all other Android Device users … Today HTC marked yet another “first” in its long history of bringing innovation to the mobile arena. Ahead of the pack, Sprint has started to make available the latest version of the Android platform, version 2.2, otherwise known as Froyo, for HTC EVO 4G. Not only is HTC EVO 4G the first Froyo device with HTC’s Sense user experience, it’s also the first mass-market Froyo handset period. In addition to bringing a number of…

Reviews

Android App Review: B&N’s nook

Amazon, Kobo, and Borders have all weighed in with their ebook apps for Android, and now it’s B&N’s turn. They’ve rebranded all their reader apps to “nook”, and finally they’ve released the nook app for Android. Right from the start, the nook app and I didn’t get off on the right foot. It almost froze the marketplace trying to download! As it turns out, it’s because the file is a whopping 17.69 megabytes! For reference, I have two games on my Droid (Replica Island and HSN Shootout) that are fairly graphic-intense. They clock in at 5.40mb and 13.47mb, respectively. The…

Editorials

Droid X Gets the Lockdown: Does it Matter?

There’s been a bunch of stuff going around the web about the Droid X and the fact that it likely will not be able to run custom ROMS and may even be hard to root. I’ll try to describe, in layman’s terms, what this may mean to a prospective Droid X buyer. What is this root and custom rom thing? First, having root is like having the Administrator user password on a Windows machine or the root password on a Mac OS X machine or Linux machine. It essentially gives you the right to modify anything on the phone. You…

Reviews

Graffiti One Comes to Android!

If you were a Palm OS fan, you were probably a whiz with Graffiti, the shorthand text input system. In college, I took all my notes on my Palm M100, and I used Graffiti so much my pen and paper notes were in an unholy mix of print scrawl and Graffiti. So when I saw this morning that Access had released Graffiti (the famous, original, pre-lawsuit with Xerox version) for Android, I practically danced in my cubicle. It is everything I had hoped it would be and more! I was very skeptical at first since Graffiti is so stylus-based, but…

News

Something New Coming from Evernote Tomorrow… You’ll Know What It is When We Do…

I love Evernote. I live in Evernote. Evernote is killing me… Evernote has been teasing about something new coming for some time. They have blog posts up about it, are running a contest about it, and have reached out directly about it. But try as I might (and I HAVE TRIED) I can’t get a clue about what they are about to unveil. The only thing I do know is that it must be something pretty major. How do I know that? Simple… I’ve been following the company and using Evernote since the current iteration of the service was in…

News

Suffering ‘Product Recall Overload’? There’s An App For That!

The other day we were watching the news and there were three product recalls in a row and my wife mentioned hearing on the radio a report about ‘recall overload’, how so much stuff is being recalled so frequently that we become numb to it all. In fact, this week there are reports on various news sources about the issue. Well, apparently the government agencies issuing these recalls are aware of this, and have launched a mobile app called ‘Recall.gov’. It brings together data from the relevant agencies – Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Food and…

News

Skyfire Web Browser Gets an Update!

I love the Skyfire browser. If you aren’t fortunate enough to be running Android 2.2 (aka Froyo), Skyfire is your best bet for web video on the go and your only option for flash video. It’s also a very handy browser to have around in general, with the ability to swap between mobile, desktop and iPhone browsing. Best of all, it’s remarkably flexible and runs equally well on my Droid and on the Camangi Webstation. If you’re familiar with Skyfire from the Windows Mobile days, you may remember that everything went through their servers. With the Android version, only the…

Editorials

Does Android Need Custom Skins?

News has been leaking out over the last few days about the new Motorola Droid phones. They sound amazing, with high-end specs like a 4.3-inch screen, 8-megapixel camera, even HDMI out. Unfortunately, it looks like Moto is also going to be slapping MotoBlur on these phones, and that’s a huge disappointment for me. It’s not that I think stock Android is the greatest thing since sliced bread. To be honest, it’s far too plain for me. But I fix that with home replacements. I’ve tried several and for now have settled on LauncherPro. It’s simple, it’s customizable, it doesn’t slow…

News

Wall Street Journal Fans the Flames of Malicious App Paranoia

Know how you can tell smartphones and app stores are truly mainstream? No, it’s not because my mother just bought a Blackberry! It’s because the Wall Street Journal is writing articles on apps, and that <gasp> malicious apps have been creeping into the smartphone space. I am being a bit tongue in cheek; the Wall Street Journal is, as always, fairly even and conservative in their tone: As smartphones and the applications that run on them take off, businesses and consumers are beginning to confront a budding dark side of the wireless Web. Online stores run by Apple Inc., Google…

Editorials

Dear Apple and Nuance, You’ve Been Dating Long Enough… Time To Get Hitched

I’ve never had much luck as a matchmaker. In fact I am perfectly horrible at it. Still, this is one time when I am pretty sure that a marriage ought to take place. That’s right, I think it is time for Apple and Nuance to start getting serious about one another. Sure, Nuance now owns MacSpeech Dictate and Scribe which run on OS X. And yes, Nuance’s Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search work beautifully on the iPhone and iPad. But that’s just dating. I want to see them take the next step. And what is that next step? I want…

Reviews

Buddy Runner for Android Review

I carry my Droid on every run so I have a phone with me. Since it’s already with me, I use it to track my pace and distance on my longer runs. There are a number of sports tracker apps in the Android marketplace but I keep going back to using one in particular, Buddy Runner. Buddy Runner is super simple. When you first start the app you are greeted by a simple landing page with a start button. Hit start, then hit the road (or trail)! If you like updates on how you are doing as you go, you…

eBooks, News

New eBook Readers Coming This Summer?

Looks like this might be the summer of ebook readers! Rumors are flying about new Kindles and nooks, the Kobo reader is hitting Borders Stores, and that’s without considering the impact all the potential Android tablets will have on the reader market. While there’s been some ebook rivalry so far, I think this next wave of readers is where the B&N-Amazon-Borders-Tablet rivalry is really going to get heated. Engadget caught an interesting FCC filing for a WiFi-only ebook reader from Barnes and Noble. Most likely it is the rumored “nook lite”. No word on whether it will be the same…

News

Sling for Android Is Almost Here!

I’m in the process of deciding how to rework my home tv setup. At this point it’s a matter of when, not if, my TiVo will die…and as I’ve said before, I don’t really see the value of upgrading to another TiVo. Since I’ll be reworking my whole setup anyway, the thought crossed my mind that a Slingbox might be fun to have. Now that I’ve seen Engadget’s preview of Sling for Android, I DEFINITELY want a Slingplayer! It looks really slick, even if it did have some beta bugs, and I am sure it will look great on the…

Reviews

Sirius XM for Android Arrives

Rejoice, satellite radio fans! Sirius XM is now available for Android. It comes with a 7-day trial if you are not already a satellite radio subscriber, and from my brief experience today I don’t plan on becoming a subscriber in the future. First of all, you need a great deal of patience to parse out the subscription options. Sirius doesn’t share what the options are for subscribers unless you log in as an existing customer, but they do assure you there’s a “discount” for internet listening (looks like it is $2.99 ON TOP OF your existing Sirius subscription). Of course,…

News

American Foundation for the Blind Looks at Smartphone Accessibility

Smartphones have become nearly indispensable productivity tools. Businesses issue them to employees, and people use them constantly to keep up with their personal lives. But what do you if you are blind or visually impaired? Tiny keyboards and 3-4 inch screens aren’t always great if your eyesight is wonderful, let alone if you have vision issues. Luckily, the American Foundation for the Blind puts out an online magazine called AccessWorld, and several articles this month covered smartphones and visual impairment. For the corporate-types, they looked at an app called Oratio for Blackberries. This is what’s called a “screen reader”, or…

Reviews

Twitter for Android Review and Comparison

Twitter released their “official” Android app on Friday afternoon, and I’ve been using it for a few days. Is it enough to unseat my current favorite (Touiteur), or even match up Twidroid and Seesmic? Read on to find out. Let’s start with the basics. Twitter offers the usual complement of “check for new tweets at x intervals”, and notifications appear in the status bar. You can set for an LED flash as well as an audible alert. All that works great, although the LED flash seems to be a bit buggy. The big downside is that when you are notified…

How to Do It Yourself!

Step by Step Android/iPhone Dual Boot Instructions

When the video of the original iPhone dual-booting Android first appeared, I was intrigued about giving it a shot. Unfortunately, I’m not super savvy on command-line activities, and I was lost about 1/3 of the way through the first how-to I found. Luckily, the sharp-eyed folks at Android Central came across more user-friendly instructions over at Redmond Pie. While it still looks like a long, time-consuming process, at least now it’s easier to understand! If you’re a visual learner, check out the above video, or hit up Redmond Pie for the text instructions if you prefer those. This weekend got…

Editorials

What’s Up With Certain Devices and the Android Market?

I have an issue that’s a bit perplexing: I have the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G and the Verizon HTC Droid Incredible. Both are Android devices, and both have the Android Market, albeit branded differently based on carrier as you can see in the above photo. I was looking up a free software title on the Incredible — one that is definitely available on the MyTouch 3G, but on the Incredible it was nowhere to be seen. This happened to me again when I did a search for another title, only this time I could see that there were other results that…

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