I’ve been writing about Android for some time now. Here are 4 of the best Android apps for Wifi. These apps allow you to find public wi-fi networks, turn your phone into a wifi hotspot and a bit more.

HTC Wifi Hotspot

This app can’t be downloaded from the market – its part of HTC build for Android 2.2 Froyo

I’ve used this loads of times – its great for getting my laptop or iPad on the Internet when needed, but the main point to remember is it kills your battery very fast. So keep your charger handy.

WeFi

WeFi has long been a favourite of mine … it’s improved over the past 18 months alot. Except it (annoyingly) keeps asking me to add details of my private home network to its database hmmm

Want it? Get it from Androlib

WiFinder

WiFinder has been my personal favourite with its not bullshit, layout it will be popular for the techies and not the marketers or anyone into user centred design.

Want it? Get it from Androlib

Y5 Battery Saver

A newer app to try – it apparently saves your battery so that your phone doesnt keep trying to find public WiFi networks to connect to.

Want it? Get it from Androlib

Damien Saunders

If you haven’t got an iPad or still not convinced you’ll need one – then you’re kidding yourself. As a marketing consultant new gadgets like the iPad need to be purchased, used extensively and then replaced with the next new shiny gadget. Why – you might ask? Because how else can you have an opinion or recommend a solution to your clients.

Today – I’m taking a quick look at the list of apps featured in iTunes under the category ‘business class’. Which ones would you need straight away? which one’s are just overkill — or just not suitable for UK users.

Business Class apps for iPad what are essential?

Dropbox of course – with 2GB of free space and syncing across multiple machines, this is a fast and easy way to access documents on the go. Of course you can increase space if you invite friends to Dropbox.

GoodReader for iPad – can open pretty much any document you from pdf to word to epub. I just discovered that you can add annotations and freehand comments which makes it useful for signing legal documents.

iMockups for iPad – if you do want to try making sketches or wireframes then this could be one to try. But it’s overdue an update so lets keep sketching with Autodesk for now.

What’s so bad about this collection?

There just isn’t much good to say about this featured collection .. many of the apps have very low ratings and the customer comments are very undesirable.  If you’re one of these featured apps – then that’s a great promotional opportunity – if you developed these apps and have so many negative comments – you need to fix them.

It’s nice to see at least 1 UK app in the list – even if it is the Financial Times app  – which is pretty useless unless you’ve paid.

There is a new breed of apps for online meetings – as I’m still waiting for my iPad2, my experiences of online meetings using Skype have been pretty flakey – unless you’ve got great wifi connected to a fast broadband connection.

Damien Saunders

I started the week with the ambition to just use iWork for a week. Today’s Tuesday and now I see the #failure of such a challenge.

iWork Pages can’t convert Word documents so easily

I’ve been sent a word document to review for a friend – that should be easy as iWork opens Microsoft Office Word .docx formats.  The document opens ok … but the content has been placed into separate textblocks on the page just like any traditional desktop publishing app would do – but of course this was supposed to be a document that needed to be cleaned up.

A simple step (select all and change the font face) was made impossible due as Select All wont select all text blocks. So it will be quicker for me to go install Office for Mac and do this in the document.

iWork Keynote now this works to convert PowerPoint

Forced to use Keynote – then I was surprised and got more than I expected from using Keynote with an existing PowerPoint presentation. I think I’ll continue to give this a try!

Damien Saunders

Managing wifi on your Android mobile phone can be a hassle, so at least there are now 3 good apps for you to use to make your wifi experience better.

Wifinder

Is the most technical looking of the 3 apps – turning it on was a bit of shock when compared to the user experience of the other 2 apps. WiFinder only has 1 button aptly labelled New Scan. You then press and hold on the WiFi SSID to see the more familar Android Wifi Connect.

There is a check box for ‘only show open Ap’ which in laymans term means ‘free wifi’. You’d use Wifinder to checkout the networks around you and determine if there is channel overlap causing interference in your wifi.

Get wifinder here

wi-sync

One of the first wifi managers, this still has some good features like being able to force 3G to stay off, connect over wifi when roaming and so on. Though I find that at the end of the day – being on an unlimited data plan I just leave my wifi on.

Get wi-sync here

WeFi Connect

WeFi Connect claimed to be building a socialnetwork or database of free wifi access points in every city … for all I know, it may still be trying to do that. Apparently, it sends data about the access point you are using back to the wefi connect central – so perhaps big brother could be watching you?

WeFi Connect has had a number of user experience updates over the past year … it now needs another as I suspect the icons and other graphics look a bit badly optimised for newer Android phones, so a lot of users might not like WeFi for this reason.

Get weFi Connect here

Damien Saunders

Developing for Android? You need to look to the bigger picture … actually this applies to anyone developing apps for mobile phones. If you want your app to be used by people that don’t speak English you need to translate it and provide some support.

There are going to be many opportunities for startups and anyone with a business model to go ‘international’ or expand abroad should check these points are covered in the marketing and product development plans.

1. Copy and clone – build the local version that’s more popular than its bigger brother (defensive/beachhead)

This has worked well for some social networks and there are countries where the local version is more successful than its international version. A business model based on a copycat strategy needs to launch, grow and keep its users interested. One quick way is to make sure the website / app is still usable for people living abroad like the Americans in London or English living in Spain.

2. Copy the idea – but make it your own

There are lots of good apps out there dying to be copied – using local data information. If you business model involves global domination you need local datasources.

A wine guide app using content from an American website may have some relevance in the English speaking world, but it won’t help when choosing a wine … a simple example: Does a $20 wine equal a £10 wine?

3. Translation is just the first step think customer support

Translating your app or website is usually the first way to go international – but make sure the plan includes how to support your local users.

For example FAQ’s is simplified as SSS in Turkish

4. Remember to localise the user experience

It’s really upsetting to find out the user experience looks really crap when you change from English to Spanish, Italian or any other language.

5. Don’t expand abroad

The problem with the Internet, App Stores and mobile phones is that their users don’t respect territories for licences and agreements. So don’t go international if you are not prepared. You may also find your app is reliant on a social community that doesn’t exist. Check that you understand the take up of broadband, internet, 3G and mobile data services.

I’ll finish with this point … What’s the fun of finding out you can be the Mayor of all the places in a town if you’re the only one using location based apps? or more relevant – don’t go international and find out you don’t have a dataset.

Damien Saunders

Develop apps for Android or develop mobile apps for Apple, some days its hard to figure out just what to do. On this website I’ve written a lot on Android phones and apps.

Around 6000 apps have been removed from the Apple store recently due to their erotic nature. It’s not that Android Market has no quality control – Adult or Erotic does not exist as a content category in Android Market but dating apps or other soft-porn apps so far have not shown huge growth (ahem) on Android.

Why Android Mobile Apps and Android Market should appeal to developers

As a platform, Android should appeal to developers because

1. Android Market provides a multi-country sales platform for apps and developers.
2. Sales of Android handsets are around 60,000 units a month and expected to grow
3. Major handset manufacturers are supporting the platform like HTC, Google (HTC), Motorola, Sony Ericsson
4. International Mobile Operators like T-Mobile, Vodafone and Orange have all been keen to sell the phones (in fact it was Voda that took Android to the rest of the world with its ‘exclusive’ of the HTC Magic)
5. Android Market is not as rigorous at quality control or moderation as Apple. You can add an app to Android Market in 24 hours

Why Android Market didn’t take off yet!

So the conditions seemed right for Android and the Android Market – but what happened? Nothing went wrong – it was just a freak set of circumstances

• App Store has a PC & Mac client for easier discovery when Android doesn’t. Android Market website doesn’t allow you to make purchases.
• Apps and Content installation is tethered to iTunes – have you tried to mount an Android in Windows Vista and given up?
• iPhone launched first with much hype – the Android ‘major’ promotional launch came late in 2009 with the Verizon Droid in the USA
• App developers were tooled up and focused on making and selling apps only for iPhone
• Purchase and payments for Apps using iTunes was already setup for many existing iPod users buying songs and videos
• Mobile operating systems (Symbian, Java, Android, iPhone, Blackberry) all differed in how to develop for them
• Adult content and many apps didn’t need to have a home on the Android thanks to the mobile internet and improvements in HTML standards
• Finally – App Developers stuck in the maelstrom of certification, moderation and content restrictions via Apple wouldn’t have wanted to start a new app development!

So what do you think? Does Google need to appoint a Director or Head of Android Market to focus on sales, promotions and support for Apps to make it easier for customers? Do the Handset Manufacturers need to do more?

Damien Saunders

Newsrob is my favourite application for Android mobiles, it’s been covered in my 10 Best Android Apps list a few times. Newsrob integratess with your account for Google Reader (which allows you to manage and read all your RSS feeds). Newsrob recently turned 1 and celebrated by introducing a Pro version and an Adfunded Free Version.

What’s fantastic about Newsrob Pro

Newsrob Pro has a new feature that is great for any social media or mobile specialist. Newsrob Pro allows you to now share your articles with comments. In the free version you can only add it to your shared list.

The Newsrob Share with note is saved in the client until it next syncs with Google Reader.

Newsrob Free Version

The Adfunded Free Version is still the best Google Reader app. No features have been removed in the freeware version. The advertising is intrusive but you don’t notice this when you are on buses or the underground and ads only show on navigational menu pages. In the first image you can see the space that is ‘reserved’ for banner ads.

Newsrob has many helpful timesavers such as

• Press the Star icon to indicate an article that is important to read again or print out at the office / home
• Share by E-mail, Gmail to send that article straight to your colleagues
• Offline sync / wifi download, so you can read articles anytime anywhere
• Share Socially if you have Seesmic installed on your phone you can share the article you are reading there.

Damien Saunders

So I have had to rebuild my Mac running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard 3 times in the past 2 days after having problems with a t-mobile usb modem which corrupts the hard drive.

Here’s the short list of my favourite, can’t live without em, just got to install them apps:

Best Apps for your Mac

1. ClamXav – still the best and most recommended free virus protection for your mac
2. Adium – pronounced like stadium, this is the multi chat application for the mac
3. Skype – for free calls to the office and home
4. Dropbox – for sharing files between the office and clients
5. Mac Office 2008 – word, powerpoint and to some extent excel, because all my templates are Office based and the guys in the office use PC’s.
6. The Unarchiver – the Mac compression utility is great, this just goes a step further
7. Google Quick Search Box – this is only slightly better than Spotlight and its a fork of the Quicksilver code
8. VLC – plays any videos you throw at it
9. Firefox – the better browser for the mac

PrefPanes and System Tools

AppTrap – deletes the unwanted files from your Mac when you delete an app

Geektool – embeds calendars, notes, the time, temperature in your desktop. Better than Dashboard

Tinkertool – use this if only for the setting to disable the dashboard

Temperature Monitor – from the same guy behind Tinkertool, you’ll want this for the Geektool

Damien Saunders

There’s no better sound than the reassuring ‘Beep at the Checkout Register’. So now you have your own Android mobile phone …here’s a few barcode scanning things you can do at home or in the shops.

First you need the best Android Barcode Scanner – which now has integration with Google search on the mobile.

1. Add a book to your Amazon Wishlist – just snap the barcode and save to list
2. Catalogue your books at home using Anobiit from Anobii
3. Catalogue your CD’s with Kooaba
4. Look up reviews of that Wine you’ve just been drinking – Wine by the Bar is the perfect app for you
5. Compare prices for that Electrical Gadget – Scan the Barcode and search online for it
6. Create your own Barcode – After installing Barcode Scanner, open your Android Contacts .. everyone now has a 2D code
7. Look up tourist guides from 2D barcodes -
8. Find something new to put on your phone – Androlib.com will help you then turn on the barcode scanner and point it at the 2D code on the screen

To get the Barcode Scanner … go to Android Market on your phone or go to Androlib.com on your PC

Damien Saunders

DROID sales in the USA and the robo-promotional ads from Verizon has boosted Android sales, so much so that hits on my blog have started to double since the new phone went on sale.

Stats are good – Top searchs on Best Apps are going to my posts for Top Android Apps and 2 top Android apps from Google.

Damien Saunders

Should you be worried that you don’t have an iPhone app? Do you know if you’re website works on a mobile? what about mobile SEO? It is very important for CEO’s and CMO’s to add mobile to their communications and marketing strategy.

The fact that most companies have yet to build a mobile website shows you are not alone and many companies want to know what they should do first.

• Build an app.
• Build a mobile strategy or
• Build a mobile website

Considering each approach …

Why Build a Mobile app

Answer Yes to these questions and you’ll know that building an app is right for you:

1. Is your company always first to market?
2. Do you want to get some PR effect?
3. Interested in winning a Mobile or Advertising industry Award

Developing an app for iPhone is the natural option for good PR or getting Marketing Awards. You can build apps and games for iPhones, Android, Nokia and many other smartphones.

Carefully consider too if you need to build an app for widescreen devices like the iPad or Smartphone netbooks.

Building a branded game or app for mobile is a good approach to complement a social media, viral or email campaign.

Develop a Marketing Strategy for Mobile

Want to understand mobile better, then consider how ‘mobile’ fits in your marketing mix. Could you get better PR? Leverage a viral campaign? Link mobile to your social media approach? Or want smartphone users to find your brand. I suggest you build a mobile website and look at your customer relationship marketing strategy.

Build a Mobile Website

Yes just do something. You can start by building a mobile friendly site, build an app and start to learn from them. Stay motivated and maybe expect the same results as the early web pioneers. Once you’ve done something you’ll still need to promote it.

So what were the 3 approaches to mobile marketing strategy again?

1. Build an App

2. Develop a Marketing Strategy plan

3. Build a mobile website

Of course whatever you do, you need to learn, get insights and leverage your stats tools, get feedback from customers and users and don’t expect to get to the top of the iTunes store unless you have a big budget.

Now tell me what you think?

Damien Saunders

With the boom in the number of apps in the App Store (over 100,000) and total downloads in excess of 2bn … someone has got to be making money … right?

In part, the iPhone does offer a better platform for apps – it’s about to overtake RIM as the leading consumer smartphone, sold more than 34 million units and got some of the highest mobile internet usage rates we’ve seen so far.

It’s not fair to say that Developers, Ad agencies or Brands are making money out of the app store.

The problem is discovery – you have to do a lot to get your app to the Featured or Popular lists and that has got to start with spending money on good PR and a Viral / Word of Mouth campaign. For small time developers and startups, who might not account for these costs – they do expect GOOD PR and WoM to equal GREAT results.

Whatever you spend on building the app and promoting the app is not going to be made back in app revenue, consider that the majority of apps are given away for ‘free’. How does anyone make money?

I attended the NMAlive workshop in London last week which looked at Why You Need an App … I agree with all the presenters, which is you have to do something mobile … but expecting it to be a new revenue stream from Day 0 is misleading.

Damien Saunders

Now that you’ve ripped and digitised all of your CD library – what do you do with your CD’s? One idea is to create a catalogue and then you can box or put away (or recycle) your CD’s and DVD’s giving you much more space to fill with books, CD’s or other stuff.

If you’re like me, I’ve been ripping all my CD’s for years and the CD and cases were just collecting dust in my room. Some audiophiles or purists will have you believe that you still will want to play the CD, but I don’t own an £800 CD player.

I wanted to recycle the packaging, keep the CD and the booklet for its album artwork. Recycling the CD or giving it away to Oxfam is also a nice spacesaving idea – but then technically, you wouldn’t own the music anymore so that digital copy would become illegal.

Where to start – searching Google for keywords like CD library, collection or managing CD’s led to lots of spurious results – like suggestions for iTunes, MediaMonkey and so on. All useless in this case. I knew that a program called Delicious would do the trick and had come across Anobit and Librarything for books. So there is some software for collectors.

I settled on testing

• CDpedia
• Music Collector
• Delicious Library 2

User friendliness

Delicious Library has the nicest interface and a number of options like coverflow, browse by bookshelf (like a library). First time users will like Delicious – it can import your iTunes automatically and its best feature is using your Mac’s iSight to scan and search for barcodes. During testing I was under joyed to find that Delicious Library free version only supports 25 entries. Then they wanted $40 to upgrade. Booo hisss.

CDpedia seems the most like iTunes. Layout is column based and clean. It matches Delicious Library in its ability to use your iSight camera as a barcode scanner. Its free version supports 25 entries. By the time I got to 25 entries, I thought paying $18 was going to be worth it.

Curiously the company behind CDpedia also makes a version of the software called Bookpedia and DVDpedia. I’m not sure why … when CDpedia does a good job of managing my CD’s and DVD’s. Delicious Library will also allow you to add books and DVD’s in the same version.

Music Collector also limits its free version to 100 entries. It lacks the Barcode Scanning ability of the other two apps. However, it can search all the same databases like Amazon, CDDB, etc if you first put the CD into the computer. Music Collectors visual style lacks any eye candy being more like a excel spreadsheet then a library database. Music Collector was the only software to have a windows version which is good news.

Features and Usage

Adding CD’s

Adding CD’s was probably the best fun … whamo … the builtin iSight camera had my adding CD’s all afternoon. I quickly found that a lot of errors come from the type of paper used for the jewel case inlay paper – shiny, coated stuff was not so good. Searching for barcodes should be easy – by default all the software want to search Amazon US or CA first. Annoyingly little things when you live somewhere else. Options to change this are under the Preferences.

One nice feature of Delicious and CDpedia is its ability to import your iTunes library as well … kinda over-rated as what you would want is the ‘sync-up’ or symbiotic link to be made between the CD entry and the iTunes entry. A good feature in Delicious is that you can click on an entry from your iTunes library and play it immediately.

All three pieces of software will support adding CD’s via a barcode scanner, importing a text file with barcodes.

Export and Publish your Collection

Delicious Library wins out on visual experience, creating bookshelves like libraries or exporting as fully functioning website were cool. CDpedia too can export as HTML or create Smart Collections like smart playlists.

Kind of cool, but not of much use is the ability to export your collection to your iPod or iPhone. If you wanted to check if you have that CD then it might be nice.

BackUp

All 3 pieces of software allow you to backup with options to backup to CSV or spreadsheets as well.

Loans & Library tools

What seemed very ‘strange’ to me was the ability to check in and out CD’s from your collection. CDpedia also allows you to setup email reminders and send Late Notes to your tardy friends. I kinda think that any friend of mine receiving such a reminder might tell me to £$%-off and never return my CD.

I thought in away that Delicious Library and CDpedia have forgotten what it is they are about … Creating a Catalogue and focus on ‘me’ first. It’s nice to have some bells and whistles but getting the core right is more important.

What convinced me of one app over the other was the addiction of adding and that the trial or ‘free’ version gives you a chance to add enough entries in the CDpedia database so that you wont want to start again. In the freemium world this is a good move.

Overall

CDpedia does have the look of a quality piece of software. Its developers Bruji should bundle the DVD and Bookpedia versions as part of the licencing. You can see quickly that Delicious and CDpedia are going head to head on features.

Limiting trial software to a few items doesn’t win converts combined with the price of Delicious Library 2, this was a turn off when I didn’t know what I wanted. Based on the internet reputation, then Delicious Library would probably be the winner with the most ‘memes’.

I’ve now added my 700+ CD’s into CDpedia and am working through creating collections. Useful when you have any number of CD/DVD holders and want to know what folder the CD is. Delicious Library has won the awards and the plaudits, but CDpedia is probably the first choice for Collectors wanting alot of features for good value.

the people at Music Collector should tweak their apps visual style, de-clutter their website and make entries unlimited to grow the number of users.

Footnotes …

iTunes, Songbird, Winamp, etc  – are more media player and can't manage your CD library … your digital format is what to use for every day playback. However iTunes doesn’t keep track of what happened to the CD.

Check out recyle-more.co.uk to find out how to recycle plastic in your area

Damien Saunders

Here’s a more up to date list featuring some of the best apps you must get on your Android phone. All of them are free in the Android Market. Some of them also have a freemium paid version. What’s good is that many of these you will use daily, but some of them will just sit on your phone and do what its supposed to do.

(update: Nov 21 – Cyrket.com has been offline for some time … but is now around again – but try www.androlib.com for these apps)

Subjectively, I’ve missed out the social network sites and the streaming music apps – I do that from home – or the in the case of music streaming … none of the apps currently work when your underground.

Do you want to disagree with what’s here or have your own list? Let me know …

1. WiSync

Manage your data sync settings for the Android – this is important if you are not on an unlimited data plan or you want things to only happen on wifi. WiSync allows you to control the background sync settings for your phone.

What I think is the WiSync should go a step further – I’d love to talk to them about how this can help when you travel. Already you can turn off any sync when not on wifi, but what about the option to allow sync on your home 3G network but not on any overseas 3G networks. Roaming settings are something to sync/think about too. It now also comes with ‘Locale plugin’ a feature I’ve not worked out what it is yet.

Get it here.

2. Wefi

Wefi is an app to manage the connection to wifi hotspots around you – it automatically shuffles through all the nearest hotspots to find out which ones are open and have internet access or need to go through a login process. This is good as many hotspots seem to be open, but when you connect, they don’t work. Team this up with Wisync and you got a killer combo.

I also suggest you go to your phone wifi settings and allow wifi to remain on when connected to the power supply. This way, any emails or other updates (news) are downloaded when you’re sleeping and your phone is charging.

Get it here.

3. Itube Status

Seems this has been removed

4. Twidroid

Twitter on your phone … its free and the most popular in the market. You can see why with all the features that are crammed in. I suggest you turn off the vibration and don’t set it to fetch all your tweets, or you’ll be playing with your phone constantly.

Get it here.

5. Barcode Scanner

Now the team at Google even love this app — combine the power of a barcode scanner with a Google search and you have a price check tool, an Amazon search solution or maybe you can use another app like Anobii and catalogue all your books.

Get it here

6. Advanced Task Manager

This app seems to have matured in its development and settled down in the last month. There probably are other ‘app killer’ apps around – but this has a great feature in that you can control what apps to kill. It used to have an auto kill all feature which ran every 2 hours, I’m glad to see that has gone as it usually meant my music or some other app would stop working just as I was in the middle of using it.

Get it here

7. NewsRob

NewsRob was one of the first apps I installed …NewsRob works with Google Reader as there is no official Google Reader Android app … its as configurable as you like in terms of how often to check, how many articles to store and settings for wifi / 3G network access.

It crashed on me once and sent an email back to the support team. The next morning I had an email from someone saying they were looking into my bug. I got a follow up email a few days later saying my problem would be fixed in the next release. Great service with a Smile.

I also suggest you go to your phone wifi settings and allow wifi to remain on when connected to the power supply. This way, any emails or other updates (news) are downloaded when you’re sleeping and your phone is charging.

Get it here:

Here’s two apps to show your friends

8. Compass

You can’t get lost with a compass on your phone (did’t you know it was magnetised) — right?

Now what does E 68 mean?

Get it here:

9. BeebPlayer (only in the UK)

Everyone’s favourite Granny had to have an Android app … its probably one of the best apps I’ve seen that was not made by the BBC’s iPlayer team. I guess history will tell if the app continues to work or be developed – or if the Beeb will turn off 3rd party access to its content.

Apparently this app only works with the Vodafone or 3 UK sims – but I’ve had success as well using this on O2.

10. Robo Defense Free

One last app that will give you days and days of fun … or months and months as it turns out. The free version has 10 difficulty settings but only one level … its also the most simple with only 3 towers and 3 upgrades.  It’s by far the best executed tower defence strategy game.

Get it here:

There are a number of things I’d like to see better apps for … After rooting my phone with the Cyanogen build … I can …

- take screenshots

- use email from an  Outlook Exchange app

I’ve noted few issues with the Android Market and I’ll blog about differences in app stores soon.

Damien Saunders

Damien Saunders

Have you just got a new HTC Magic? or waiting for the HTC Hero to come out? Here are 2 must have apps to get for free from the Android Market to manage your wifi and data connections

Wefi – Manage your battery life and wi-fi connectivty

Turn it on to see if there are free networks around you – once its found somewhere, it will login if its free or tell you it needs a password. Turn it to off when you leave your home wifi and it wont look for other networks. Saves you battery and saves you time.

A new version of this was recently released – with a fresher user interface, which now looks a little busy. However it still does the job.

The developers claim the app will in the future download from the wefi.com website a list of the nearest wifi spots, but this feature is something they need – so long as it grows the list of international wifi hot spots

Wisync – Reduce your mobile internet usage when you dont have unlimited data

WiSync for the Google Android Phone is an application that automatically enable/disable syncing on WIFI (dis)connect. This will save you money for those without unlimited data plans. Also saves battery by preventing constant background syncing. Sync only when you turn WIFI on/off as you need

Damien Saunders

Looking for somewhere to go …. Maybe you need to waste some time or want to find something else to try on your Google Android G1 or HTC Magic.

Google obviously has embedded a lot things into the phone – but here are 2 apps that were not installed on the Android phone when you open the box.

Places Directory

Price FREE   Downloads >250,000

updated — 21 Sept -- Even before augmented reality became a buzzword … Google Places Directory was already bringing Google Maps together with GPS / Location Based Services. The Places Directory is a search aggregator – easily find out the most talked about / blogged / reviewed Cafes in London. Trying to find a ‘Gas Station’ in Brixton might be a bit spurious – Gas Stations are not commonly found in the UK, but petrol stations are.

Places Directory is a great aggregator of content from Googles own directories, Wikitude, QYPE and food review sites etc. It’s still much better than the competition (think LAYAR) as its very quick and you dont have to join any new websites before you can use it.

Android Market - point your camera here

Voice Search

A new one, that I just found … and one to show your friends. Just speak and search Google. “Computer – take me to your leader”

Both apps are in the Android Market

Damien Saunders

So its Happy Birthday to Apple and its App Store – 1 year old. Its created a new industry and probably will change the way everyone digests content – now that everything has an app or a widget you dont need to browse for it.

Except for Search – Apple and the Apps store has changed how mobile phone manufacturers think about content like Nokia, RIM and Sony Ericsson all launched (or launching) app stores in the past 3 months.

So its not just the billions of downloads of apps for everything from the weather to ‘where am i right now’ or the ‘find my lost phone’, there are all the people making apps now.

And I can’t forget Android Market which and the HTC Android phones which launched latter than the iPhone / iPod touch, but that means todays Apple iPhone developers, Java developers, etc can now go and convert their apps to Android. And they already ARE.

Damien Saunders

29 Sep 09:  This is the better post to read: http://damiensaunders.com/2009/08/11/10-best-android-apps-for-your-phone/

Ok I’ve been using an HTC Magic for a few days now and I’m loving it … I’m so hooked I could almost get myself kicked out of the house, or have my ‘beautiful & precious’ phone smashed

Here’s what you too should try

there are so many free Apps in the Android Market that you can’t get bored. Given how much I use a phone and my focus on the mobiles and music, heres a choice selection

LAST.FM – its more a radio station here than the super Vodafone Last.fm Scrobbler (which you know I love)

NewsRob – it works with Google Reader – but I’m still not sure why there isn’t a GReader app?

Android-VNC-Viewer – once I got it working I loved it, but its a tiny screen, don’t use it for trying to control WinAmp or something, but its funny if you know how to use it to turn off windose

Toggle Wifi – its dead simple, but it still dont help if you then have to have a username or password for the wifi account

Barcode Scanner and Book Scanner – i love it … except when it goes beep in the bookshop (hehehe)

So whats missing?

• a basic screenshot app like the s60 Symbian app
• a VLC player for any videos
• a WinVista fix as today you still can’t plug your droid phone into your Vista machine
• a music store client that I’m happy to use

Damien Saunders

I’ve been using Nokia’s for a while now – N95, N95 8Gb and the E71

Here’s the top apps I put on any phone when I set it up

Vodafone Last.fm Scrobbler – gee I ‘made’ this .. but I love it so. Scrobble what you listen to while out n about, underground or overseas, check your charts and what your friends are up to. This s60 app is fuly symbian signed and tested on a number of Vodafone networks – and its the only scrobbler for the Nokia 5800 so far.

S60 Screen Shot – great for when you need that shot for the website, product reviews or whatever. Saves pictures as PNG, BMP or JPG and can also take them automatically every few seconds.

Google Search – works great once you install it you have a little Google Search box on your phone screen – its a killer ‘app’ or widget that will help drive mobile internet usage

Nokia Mail for Exchange – the E71 comes with a number of push e-mail apps, but this is the best so far. Really its only let down is that you can’t copy an email to a task or flag it for follow-up (but thats the same problem for Blackberry too).

Damien Saunders