First off, there is the choice over the biggest app of all, which version of Android to use. Although I use a HTC Hero, I am not a big fan of the Sense interface, so instead I have chosen to install a vanilla (plain) rooted version of Android. As I am using a custom ROM (the name given to the OS that the phone runs) I can choose to use a more modern version of Android than is currently available on the HTC Hero. Thus, whilst other UK Orange HTC Hero users are still waiting for Orange to get their update out there, I have been rocking Android 2.1 for over two months now. I use RaduG’s VanillaEclair ROM which is pretty damn perfect. For those that don’t know, the advantage of running a rooted version of a ROM means you can install certain apps that have added functionality and you have greater control over your phone, more about this later.

The second most important app (and from now on I am only talking about real apps here) is what Home app to use. The Home app is the one that you see and use almost all the time. It is the first screen you see after you unlock your phone and it is what displays the menu of all your apps . The default Android Home app isn’t bad, but there is certainly room for improvement. There are a number of Home apps out there, both free and paid for with various functions. I have settled on the rather awesome LauncherPro. LauncherPro is based on the stock Android Home app, but it has a myriad of improvements. First off, it has a dock at the bottom, that is fully customisable, allowing you to put shortcuts to apps, contacts and folders right on the bottom of your Home screen. Even better, you can have up to three docks, which you can swype between, so you can have 12 shortcuts. Furthermore, a newly released feature allows you to add a gesture shortcut to each of those shortcuts, so swiping up on a shortcut opens up another shortcut, so you can have in effect 24 shortcuts in all. As you can see on my screenshot, I have a shortcut for the browser, the phone, messaging and gmail. The middle “blocks” button takes me to my menu of apps. You can also see another excellent feature of LauncherPro, the ability to give message indications for certain shortcuts, in this screenshot it is showing I have 2 unread gmails, ooh, how popular I am. LauncherPro also features some of the more popular features from alternative Home apps, like ADW Launcher and HTC’s Sense – a “helicopter” overview of all your home screens and scrollable widgets, more about them in second. There are two versions of LauncherPro, the free version, called LauncherPro and a paid for improved version called LauncherPro Plus. LauncherPro Plus includes additional features (and more are being added all the time), the main ones are three built-in widgets: bookmarks, calendar and people. You can see the calendar widget in the screenshot to the right, it basically shows you your upcoming appointments. The great thing is that it is scrollable, so you can scroll through about a month ahead to see what is coming up. The people widget shows a pre-selected group from your contacts and is also scrollable, clicking on a contact pops up a context sensitive menu with various options to interact with that person. The bookmark widget shows thumbnails of all your bookmarks, though I have not used that widget yet, so can’t say more than that. I’d highly recommend the Plus version, if only to support the excellent developer of LauncherPro, as it is a one-man show.

My next awesome app is Tasker, but I have already mentioned this app in a previous post so I wont go on about it here. Basically, Tasker allows you to set up various profiles that enable or disable various settings. It essentially allows you take full control of your phone. Lifehacker wrote some cool guides on how to take full advantage of Tasker. You can see some examples of the profiles I use in the screenshot to the right. So, for example during the day, I turn on my data connection and auto-sync, but at night these are off, to save battery power. Another profile simply notifies me when the phone is charged, so I don’t leave it plugged in the charger for an age. It is an incredibly powerful tool and helps you take total control over your phone.

Up next is Titanium Backup. This app only works on a phone with a rooted ROM, as I mentioned earlier. It’s one of those awesome apps that you keep installed and only use occasionally, but is very useful when you use it. It allows you to backup all your apps and their associated data. Then, when you come to install a new ROM, you can simply restore that backup and all your apps, with all their settings as you left them. Nice. You can also use it to backup pretty much anything else as well, such as your contacts, text messages, browser bookmarks etc etc.

Next on the list is the rather awesome CoPilot Live v8. Whilst Google’s Navigation app is certainly useful, it only works online and gets into trouble if you veer off course without an internet connection – which in the UK can happen from time to time, especially if you are on Orange. CoPilot is in a whole different league when it comes to SatNav apps. It is just beautiful, works really well and is very easy to use. It has a few additional features, like nearby Points Of Interest indicators, the ability to route missing out toll roads and bridges and live tracking. You can buy maps for most of the major countries in Europe and the United States for a reasonable amount (way cheaper than the cost of maps for v7). I used it on an 8 hour round-trip and it didn’t flake out on me once. Because all the maps are stored on your SD card, it works offline, so you never loose where you are or where you are going. I wouldn’t be surprised if they come out with a new version next year supporting 3D models of buildings in major cities, ala Google Earth, but that will no doubt require the purchase of a new licence and no doubt a new phone to power it all!

Next on the list is the rather cool SystemPanel. This is a great app for keeping an eye on your phone to make sure it is running OK. It shows you which apps are running, how much memory is being used and which apps are thrashing your CPU (and hence killing your battery). It also allows you to monitor CPU and battery usage as well as data usage. Furthermore, it has an app archive facility allowing you to backup non-protected apps. It does have the ability to kill tasks and apps to “free memory”, but this is advised against, as Android is designed to use up as much memory as possible, just like Linux, so you are always going to be “low on memory”. Android kills apps itself if another app needs more memory, so task killers really aren’t useful. I use it if an app is misbehaving and to track down what app is maxing out my CPU and generally to keep tabs on my phone. It has a lovely GUI and is very reliable.

My final app that I would recommend is the BBC News widget by Jim Blackler. It might only be useful to users in the UK, although it does show World news if you want. It is by far the best news widget I have found. I did use AnyRSS Reader for a long time, but I never liked not having an image to view and it took up too much screen space. The BBC News widget takes up only one “slot” on your home screen, yet manages to squeeze a picture and an informative headline into that space. You can set it to regularly update throughout the day, so whenever you turn your phone on, you are always aware of the latest news around the world. You can see it in action in the screen shot a few images above, showing the news headlines (quite why the BBC thinks an article on being single is a news headline is any one’s guess, but that’s modern media for you) and David Cameron’s latest foreign policy gaff.

There is one more app that I use everyday, but it is quite specific to me. IP Cam Viewer is a great app if you need easy and quick access to images from an IP Webcam. I have a baby daughter and have set up a night-vision webcam to monitor her during the night and day when she sleeps. IP Cam Viewer allows me to keep tabs on her late at night and when it gets dark when we are putting her to bed. The developer of the app is very active, updating it constantly and it even supports audio from some webcams.

It worked perfectly with my cheap Fosscam ripoff from eBay (until I punched a hole through the microphone by accident and the plug literally fell apart in my hand!). If you need a way to view webcam images on your phone, I would highly recommend it.

That then is about it for my favourite apps on Android. Here are some other apps that I use occasionally that deserve an honorable mention: Astrid (for managing your daily tasks), Andromote (an awesome UPnP client), APNdroid (for turning off your data connection), Barcode Scanner (you know, for scanning barcodes), ConnectBot (for logging in to PCs via SSH), Dropbox (for sharing files), DroidWiki (for making awesome TiddlyWiki style notes), ES File Explorer (for browsing my files on the phone and on the LAN), Power Strip and Quick Settings (for quick access to various settings no matter what app you have open) and WaveSecure (for tracking my phone if it is lost or stolen and for backing up contacts online).

I hope you like the apps listed here. It is interesting to note that all the apps I have mentioned are paid-for. Whilst the majority of the apps mentioned here come in a “free” version, I find I like to thank the dev for all their hard work so am happy to upgrade to the fully featured versions.

SPV E650

I am always trying out new ways to best use this device, so I thought I would share what I currently have settled on. First off, a little background about what I want to achieve from this device. I, like most normal users, am stuck behind a desk most of the time, I am not a road warrior, so I only need my device to help me out, not run my life. I mainly use it to  manage my time and make notes, not as my only work tool. Thus, I have concentrated on time management tools.

My main task management tool is WebIS’ PocketInformant, a replacement to the default Pocket Outlook installed on my phone. PocketInformant has a huge amount of options and allows you to define different calender views, add reminders about meetings, tasks and notes, as well as manage your contacts. My main use is to simply add any reminders that I need about project and task due dates, and also write notes about projects I am working on, alongside reminders for these notes.

PocketInformant

My next tool is SBSH’s Facade. This is a home screen plugin that alongside adding shortcuts to as many apps as you want, meters for various phone stats, it also adds a handy calender preview right on the home screen. You can use it to instantly check up on task that day, simply by unlocking the phone to operate the screen. I find it incredibly handy.

Facade

Finally, as a bonus, if you also have SBSH’s Pocket Weather, you get a weather forecast in your home screen to

Pocket Weather

Finally, to help me manage all my thoughts and ideas I have when I am on the move, I simply whack them down into the phone’s built in notes application – or Pocket Word depending on how big my blabbing will be. Then, I transfer over the file and copy and paste into a tiddlywiki file. Not the most elegant of solutions and I could edit the tiddlywiki file on the phone, but it seems like PIE isn’t designed for such a java heavy page.

So, this is how I work and it works great for me.

However, it really comes into its own when you install some custom firmware on it, available from here and here. This site gives access to a variety of firmware, from one based on the original Linksys firmware (probobly the easiest to use, but based on an old Linux kernel) called uNSLUng to full blown Debian.

unslung

This opens up a whole world of possibilities, as you can then install loads of apps to the little device, and since most of these firmware types allow you run the firmware from an attached drive, you then get past the limited memory of the device. You can visit here to find out what people are doing with their NSLU2s, commonly called slugs. Examples include using it to host Apache2 and WordPress (as I did to run my website for my wedding), run an iTunes mt-daap server called firefly, run various backup solutions and even as the basis for a Digital Photo Frame.

Personally, I installed openWRT on it, as it is designed to be run from memory (so the hard drive aint running all the time) and it has a nice web interface. I use it to run a number of rsync jobs, as described in a previous post, to back up my media files occasionally, so it acts as a redundant drive. I might also get it to act as an FTP server and I am considering installing the IDP program snort on it. It wont be a Gatekeeper but it will be a start. There is a huge amount you can do with this device and it is great to use for task that need a computer to be on all the time, but doesn’t require much processing power. Since the slug uses very little power when running, it will save on your electricity bills

See below:

Little Big Planet (LBP) is Sony’s lead title for Playstation 3 at the moment and it comes highly praised by many industry experts. You play the character of Sack Boy – a loveable toy person, that you can dress up and modify in many different ways, just like his little room he lives in. LBP’s single player mode is part 2.5D platformer, full of lovely little levels where you collect stickers, items and tools that you can use to decorate your room. It is these items and tools that then go towards the main part of the game, building your own levels. This is the real fun of LBP, you can create your own levels and then share them with other players and friends. People who see LBP as just a platformer are only seeing a very small part of the game. It is the ability to create and share levels which is the real draw and is no-doubt going to lead to loads of amazing creations.

LBP

I’ve only played it for about half an hour, but already I have fallen in love with it. The addition of tutorials from Stephen Fry only add to the cuteness. Truly awesome stuff. Lets just hope the fun lasts.

Rsback uses the highly recommended program rsync to make backups. It is basically a script for rsync that you need to add certain configurations to, to set up different backup jobs. It is set up in such a way as to perform incremental backups that occur daily and weekly – ensuring you always have a nice historical record of your files.

After messing around with so many other options, I found it the best option and highly recommend it. You need to get down and dirty with a text file configuration, but that is the norm with Ubuntu.

There are ofcourse many Windows options out there.

rsback

ET screenie

You join either the axis or the allies, and then choose a class: either Soldier, Medic, Engineer, Field Ops or Covert Ops. Each class has certain unique abilities (Soldiers can use extra-powerful weapons, Medics can revive and heal, Engineers can destroy and repair objectives, Field Ops can call airstrikes and give ammo and Covert Ops can disguise themselves as the enemy). Each map typically has an objective that has to be completed by one of the teams, or sometimes each team has an objective to complete.

ET screenie

All the game servers are hosted by clans or individuals, meaning they often come with a ready-made community. Despite the game being released in 2003, it is still very popular and has a cult following amongst its regular players.

I play only on one server, those provided by the Buffalo Bad Ass (BBA) clan (of which I am a member). They are generally ranked number one amongst all the ET servers, and are known for having a good friendly bunch of players on.

If you like FPS and multiplayer games, I highly recommend you get your hands on this excellent free game. Head on over to the BBA forums if you need any help to get started, and don’t be put off if you get killed a lot when you first start. We were all noobs once.

The first link below gives you a download for the original installer, it is then worth installing the two additional patches that are also linked.

ET download
Update 1
Update 2

Helium Music Manager

There are many free alternatives out there, such as Winamp, MediaMonkey and Songbird, but I decided eventually to settle for Helium Music Manager. Helium is a full featured music management tool that offers in-depth music library capabilities, CD ripping and music importing, extensive file tagging options, MP3 player sync (including iPods), album artist information tools and even extensive physical CD management tools. It cost around £25 for the full version and I find it is by far the best tool available. Everything you can think of that you would reasonably need to do is possible, and it can even do some things you don’t expect (such as constantly re-filling you playlist with a random or semi-random selection of tracks (even using your last.fm profile to suggest songs)). It can handle most common music file types and can convert between them. What is really refreshing is that it doesn’t restrict you to storing your music in one particular location that it chooses (iTunes) nor does it needlessly make copies of your album art in a new folder and instead uses the album art in your music folder or saved in tags (iTunes). However, given that iTunes is free and Helium is not, I can’t moan too much

Furthermore, the developers are very user interactive, responding to bug reports and feature requests and constantly adding new features and fixing bugs as they are found. The only negative I find is that a new version is released each year, which requires a paid for upgrade of about £12 a time. Whilst the new features added are always welcome, it is a little galling to have to keep on paying for them.