Tips and Tricks for Android Users
Applications
Gettie Awards
May 29th
If you’ve had a hacking waiting around for the right time to be released, this might be it. The Gettie Awards is offering $15,000 to the best Android app they find. There are categories for all the major mobile platforms, and an overall prize of $25,000! If you haven’t been coding, dust off your compiler and get cracking.
Finding Great Apps
May 5th
Now that there are more than 50K apps in the market, there are a bunch of interesting services out there to help you find the best ones. Of course, some of the services are better than others. Here are a few of my favorites:
- http://www.appolicious.com/ – has an Android area
- http://appboy.com/ – includes Android apps
- http://101bestandroidapps.com/ – good listing of apps
- http://getjar.com – set your phone type to one of the Android handsets
Other great places to find apps? Leave me a comment.
Launcher Dock
May 28th
Another widget I’m running now that I have Cupcake installed is “Launcher Dock”. It’s a 1×1 widget that holds launchers for up to 8 apps. I put some of my less frequently launched (but still relatively frequently used) apps in there so that I can have all their icons on the main screen. This is a shot of my main screen with a configured Launcher Dock by the bottom right corner, just above the San Mateo weather widget:
When you tap the widget once it brings up a selector with launchers for each of the apps you’ve added plus an icon to start the widget configuration interface. Here’s what mine looks like after tapping on the widget:
And what the configuration interface looks like if you tap on that center icon:
I think it’s a pretty slick widget. Great way to increase launcher density if you have a few widgets taking up some space. And it looks pretty good there on the home screen.
Toggle Settings
May 25th
Normally I have a few quick toggle applications sitting on my home screen to quickly switch on and off Bluetooth, Wifi, GPS, etc. It really saves a ton of battery life switching off hardware when it’s not in use. I just ran across the free Toggle Settings app from cooolmagic. It has all the hardware switches, some cool status info (like what wifi network you’re connected to), and new toggles for stuff like auto-sync. Very useful, and it looks pretty slick. Just search for “Toggle Settings” in the market and you should find both the 1.1 and 1.5 versions of the app. Here’s a quick rundown of the controls:
- Turn on and off airline mode
- Turn on and off autosync
- Turn on and off bluetooth
- Turn on and off GPS
- Turn on and off Wifi, and show what network you’re connected to if you are connected
- Control the brightness level and screen timeout, or disable screen timeout completely
- Turn on and off silent mode
- Control the volume
