TODO

TODO apps were amongst the first things I installed on my android.

There's many good TODO apps, with all kinds of UIs and features.  The first one I stuck with was Astrid, because of it's widget.  If I have to remember to open an app to know what I have to do, my tasks will remain undone.  And if a widget's an eye sore, there's no way I'll keep it on my main desktops.

My pick's something I discovered during the last apps sale, named simply Tasks.

Tasks sync with google tasks and let you manage multiple accounts with multiple tasks lists.  It also offers a great widget that's got a clean look and that not only let you see your tasks, but mark them completed without having to open the app.  And it offers two themes, white and black, the black one having a transparent background.  I just love transparent stuff on my desktops :)

Another thing that shines by it's simplicity is it's manual sorting. While automagic sorting based on priority, deadline and other factors might seem interesting, it's never quite right.  Much better to just sort it your way, and adjust it as your priorities change.

Altertive to Google Navigation

Don't get me wrong, I love google navigation.  I use it often, love google maps and it's routes and navigation features.  But that's not the end of it.

I tried other navigation apps to see what they had to offer.  And today, I was stuck deep in rush hour traffic.  I decided to ask my alternative advisors their opinions.

Actually, I only asked my favorite one, Waze.  It's a social network meet maps and navigation.  Not that I love the idea of social networks, but the app's got some strong points going for it.

First, you can choose the language of the navigation prompts.  Yes you can.  And that's already a major point whether you live in Europe or Quebec.

Then, what got me to write this, it saved me over 30 min on my way home today.  While google sent me through the congested main roads, waze got me back to my daily favorite back roads, saving me considerable time.

Of course it's also a social network thing.  So you get live updates from other Waze users and you can chat with fellow Waze users close by.  And it uses all users's position and speed to figure out traffic, tells you about accidents, speed traps and other problems.

So for me it's a pretty decent GPS app what does it right, in the language you want it to.

Let there be voice!

You probably know that your phone can speak.  Spoken instructions in google maps are just one example.  This is made possible thanks to TTS.

TTS stands for Text To Speech.  It's the engine that converts written words and phrases to (hopefully) intelligible sounds.  It's used by navigation software to guide you on your way, by reader application to read your news while you're jogging or driving, and now by personal assistants that understand what you say and reply to your questions and commands.

Your phone came with Pico TTS and/or Google TTS.  Those are basic engines meant to provide minimum functionality out of the box.  You should be able to understand what comes out of them, but they won't fool you into thinking that it's a person speaking.

Luckily, there are a few professional TTS engines available for Android.  I don't have one single pick, so I'll list the best ones with their main characteristics.

The first one's SVOX Classic TTS.  The app's a free download that will let you sample their many voices.  One of it's high points is the number of languages supported.  They have, for example, male and female voices for both French (France) and Canadian French.  Each voice is available for 2.99$ from the market.  While their English voices are good, Chantal, their Canadian French female one is the best one around.

Next in line is IVONA HQ beta.  This one's the engine, and voices are available from the market.  They're very good, but come in a hefty 250MB package; that might be a problem if you have an old or "budget" device.  One selling point is that while they're in beta phase, all their voices are available for free.  They're definitely worth the download if you have the space.

Last but not least, CereProc English voices.  They're very good and come in a 160MB package for 1.60$.  You can sample them from their website, www.cereproc.com.  The Adam voice is so good it should make you forget that it's a computer talking.

Listen to a few samples, and you'll soon be looking for more apps to make your Android talk...

One more password please?

You know it's important to pick good, secure passwords.  But more important is picking unique passwords. The last thing you want is for someone to login to your bank account right after you created that free account on freekittenwallpapers.com or when that trustworthy social site gets hacked.

Let's admit it, it's hard to come up with a good password, and almost impossible to do it when you're in a hurry.  Luckily, there's an app for that.  A bunch of them, actually.  My pick's Advanced Password Generator.

It offers batch generation of random characters passwords (pviiag3r2m34), pronounceable passwords (datercheekth), and Memorable passwords (ShoeSpews37Bumps).  Pick your poison, then copy it over to your favourite password manager and you're done.

Passwords manager

You've got dozens of passwords to remember.  Not an easy feat...

Android to the rescue!

There's an overwhelming number of password managers available in the market (or Play, as it's now called).  Should you use free software, or are the paid alternatives better?  What features are you looking for?

To make it simple for you, here's my pick: Pocket.

It's a free app that looks great and is very simple to use.  It uses strong cryptography to protect your sensitive information and allow you to sync your encrypted database to Dropbox.  That means you'll have a backup in case you loose your phone, and you can sync it between many devices.

A desktop version is also available as a windows application and cross-platform java jar file.  Having the option to enter your passwords from your computer's keyboard is valuable, especially when you're getting started and importing all your existing password.

No more excuse for those post-it under your keyboard!

SSH Revisited

Things change, and they change fast in the Android world.

My trusty SSH client, ConnectBot, got abandoned by it's developers.

Luckily, development and maintenance now continues in two forked projects.  Of those, my pick's Irssi ConnectBox.  One of it's major feature is support for physical keyboards, including CTRL and TAB keys.  Whether you've got a bluetooth keyboard or a tablet with a keyboard dock, that's a godsend.

On the server side, there's a new player: Dropbear SSH Server.  It's a free, open source, full featured SSH server with a clean interface.  It does seem to require root permissions to run though, so if you're on a stock unrooted ROM, you may have to stick to SSHDroid (free with ads).

Expense tracker

I have to admit I'm pretty bad at keeping a budget.  I think one of the reason is that I never found the right tool for the job.

I actually hunted down money management apps twice.  The first time around, I was looking for a complete budget solution.  My main criteria was cloud sync, or at least PC sync, to do most of the work from a computer.  The Android app would follow me around but wouldn't be the only interface.  I was also looking for something to manage multiple accounts, income sources, scheduled repeating expenses, and everything else related to money management.  I didn't find my holy grail, and gave up.

This time around, I looked for a smaller, more focused solution.  Keeping the heavy lifting to the PC, I searched for an expense tracker for recording day to day spending.

After much searching, installing and trying, I settled on AndroMoney.  It's high points are it's intuitive and efficient interface, good looks, and it's useful graphs and summaries.  You can take pictures of your bills from inside the app, but that's of limited use since the saved images are of too low resolution to be readable.  That'll hopefully change in a future version...

If you're looking for a way to keep track of that fleeting money, give AndroMoney a try.

Got Ads?

I know money makes the world go round, and I also know that there's a bunch of developers making great apps that make our life easier and it's just fair that they're paid for their work.

But I can't stand ads.  Banners on my screens are like flies in my soup or cockroaches in my bed.

Since I got my 1st Android, my tool to remove such annoyances was AdFree.

The concept is simple: To display ads, applications contact a web server on the internet and ask for a banner.  Said server logs the information it receives and provides the banner, more or less tuned for your demographics.

To contact that server, it needs it's address.  DNS is the directory service that provides computer's addresses to requesting programs.  But before asking a DNS servers, a local "hosts" file that contains name-to-addresses mappings is consulted.  If, instead of containing valid mappings it contains "broken" ones, it'll prevent the communication from happening.

There's a few online services that provides lists of ad servers for which broken entries can be created.

To leverage those lists, my pick is now AdAway.  My previous app failed after an upgrade, at which point I found this one.  It downloads a few lists, merge them, and updates your hosts file.  Note that your device must be rooted for this to work.  Otherwise you don't have the privileges necessary to update system files.

Some of the good features of AdAway include customizing the list of URLs from which to fetch hosts lists, adding whitelisted items and using an included local webserver to serve fake ads and prevent some applications from crashing or displaying lenghty error messages because they can't reach their ad server.

Battery widget

Sadly, many modern "phones" have quite a short battery life.

You can't make your phone's battery perform better, but you can keep and eye on it and, if it's not satisfying, try and figure out why it's not performing as you'd like it to.

One tool I like for that is Gauge Battery Widget.  It's a simple, clean little configurable widget that displays your battery level as a percentage and gauge of your choice.  Clicking on it will let you reach the system's top battery consumers screen.  This lets you quickly see those stats without having to dig through the system menus.

Normally, most phone should have "Display" as their top battery consumer.  Powering up that nice screen does take juice.  But if you're unlucky, your top battery consumer will be "Android OS", which is a generic name for a bunch of system processes.

SSH (that's Secure Shell)

If you use Linux, or any Unix variant, you use SSH.

The most popular ssh client on Android is ConnectBot.  It also offers telnet and local terminal functionality, which saves you the hassle of installing and maintaining a dedicated terminal.  And it supports private keys, allowing you password-less logins; It's got everything an SSH client should have.

Looking at this the other way, SSHDroid lets you run an SSH server on your android device (which is a Linux system after all).  It supports private keys to let you login without password from your trusted PCs.

You'll need a rooted device to listen on port 22, but then you'll probably have to purchase the Pro version since it'll detect that you're using AdFree or have found another way to free your device of annoying ads.  SSHDroid is the only app I've seen that mind not being able to display it's revenue-producing visual pollution.  Or more believably it's developer is the only one that thought about checking...

The SSH client is helpful, especially if you're on call and carry a bluetooth keyboard on your faraway trips instead of a much heavier laptop plus it's costly dedicated cellular modem; but the server can be a revelation as it lets you scp files back and forth in addition to giving you a full console interface (your PC) to work on, or hack, your device.

Scientific RPN Calculator

Do you use an RPN calculator?  Or, to be more precise, do you have an HP48 calculator?  If you do, don't waste time and install Droid48.  It's the whole thing, free, on your phone.  Without the famous tactile feedback, but much faster than the original :)

I have a 48SX.  The brown one.  I've had it forever.  And it's the only calculator I'll use.  Problem it, it's big and I never have it on me when I need it.  But thanks to Droid48, I now have my calculator in my pocket all the time, one touch away.

Don't know what RPN means?

It stands for Reverse Polish Notation.  It's stack-based, which means you don't type "2", "+", "2", "=" but rather "2", ENTER, "2", "+".  It might be too late now to learn it and change the way you calculate, which is sad, because once used to it, it's vastly superior to the "simple" way.

Cloud Storage, and why you should care

If you're not in the know, "the could" is a term used to refer to an anonymous mass of computers connected to the Internet.  It usually also implies redundancy, meaning that what's on "the cloud" isn't on a single server somewhere (that's just "the Internet") but it's distributed across a bunch of them.

Your emails, for example, can be on your PC where they'll disappear when your hard disk crash, on an Internet server that probably better backups than you do, or on the cloud where they'll survive you.

There's a lot of services offered on the cloud, but what we're interested in now is storage.  There's a lot of cloud storage providers.  The more useful one is Dropbox.  Why?  First, because it works well on every computer and mobile platform.  And because they give you two gigabytes of free storage.  And let you share folders with other dropbox users.  But more importantly, because many Android apps support backing up and syncing their data on it.

Let's take an example: Epistle.  It's a dead simple notepad.  Open note, write text, close note.  But it supports backup to dropbox, and sync back on start.  So you can access it's folder on your PC and edit files there.  Type whatever's on your mind while you're on the PC, be it a poem, gift ideas, instructions or anything else, then read and edit them on the go from your android.  Pocket does the same with an encrypted file containing your passwords and other personal info.  Titanium Backup (Pro version) can send your apps and data backups to dropbox in case your phone's lost or destroyed.

Once you have created a dropbox account, install the official Dropbox app that'll let you access all the files you've stored on that service.  And all the files and folders other users have shared with you.

Do consider though that while most service providers do their best to protect your data, things in or out of their control can happen.  While what you store there is probably safer than what's on that PC in the living room running and old unpatched version of windows and connected to that misconfigured wireless router, it's not 100% secure either.  Your basic approach should be to store private and confidential information there only if encrypted with strong cryptography.  More on that another day

Notifications spam... WTF?

I just got bit by this and suffered through many seconds of intense spiritual discomfort before finding a cure.

There's a new contender for the "Most annoying stuff" award, and it's called AirPush.  There's a few implementations with different names, but that seem to be by what the idea's generally referred.

What this does is push random spam to your notification bar.  That place where you keep an eye to detect missed email, battery status and other useful tidbits gets hijacked by irrelevant crap.

Good news is, there's solutions.  The more obvious one is to figure out what application's guilty and remove it forever.  If you're kind, also take a second to put a one star rating on the market to help other users avoid getting bit.

There's a small app, Airpush Detector, that'll pinpoint the culprit.  It's free, small, and require no permission.  The kind of app that can stay on your phone forever even if you never use it.

If you absolutely must keep the guilty app, there's other less elegant means to protect yourself.  Those include Airblock and Airblocker (for rooted phones) that are supposed to filter the crap.  Or you can try AirPush's Permanent Opt Out, either through their web site or the market app.  But I fear you'll have to do something similar for every company that have it's own name and implementation.

QR and Barcode scanners

If you're looking for something that you didn't know you needed, bar codes scanners are part of it.

There's two basic types of bar codes:

Standard bar codes are one dimensional codes that you see behind every product you buy.  They encode a short string, often a number, in a linear machine-readable format.

QR, for Quick Response, are 2D codes you now see in magazines, shop windows, web pages, T-Shirts and almost everywhere else.  They can encode much more information and are often used to give URLs or contact info.

Being able to scan those means that when you see something interesting that's got a code, pointing your phone at it will let you instantly open their web page without any typing.

And for linear codes, being able to read them can also bring huge gains... here's an example:  You're in a store and you see that expensive gizmo you've been craving.  Is there a better price online?  Maybe another store around have it on sale?  Just scan it's code and let an app like Google Shopper do the rest!

Scanner apps can offer more or less features.  1D and/or 2D scanning, opening URLs in your browser and adding contacts to your address book, using online services to find products and shop for them, etc.  Some also offer bar code generation, so you can render your contact information or the address of your favorite restaurant on your phone's screen for your friends to scan.

My pick, QR Barcode Scanner offer all of those features in a clean and simple interface.  For some reason, it also scan codes much faster that other similar apps.

Even tough you might not use it often, install it and put a link somewhere easy to reach for those times when it'll come in handy.  You'll be glad you knew about it and had it ready.

Web browsers

There's a few browsers available for your Android.  The first one being, of course, the default one name "Browser".  I shall call it "webkit".

Others include Firefox, that you already know, Opera, Dolphin and Skyfire.

Let's start by first splitting them into two groups.  There's "standard" browsers, and "mobile-accelerated" browsers.  The latest being Skyfire and the Mini version of the Opera browser.  They're accelerated because most of the browser software isn't running on your device, but on their internet servers.  Those servers perform all of the queries for the pages you want to see and their embedded images, render the resulting page, compress it, then send it to your phone.  This gives a tremendous advantage in two situations: if you have a slow data connection, or if your hardware's older and slower.  In those cases, those two browsers should definitely be on top of your list.  Or rather, Opera Mini should be, since all I've been able to get out of Skyfire is bugs and crashes :(

And what if you've got a modern device with good internet access?

Your choices are the default webkit, Opera, Firefox & Dolphin.

Webkit's decent but have limited functionality.  Less so with the ICS (Android  4) version with it's new features and interesting thumb menus.

Dolphin is a mobile-specific browser, that's feature-full and efficient enough.

Firefox, being the PC version's counterpart, have a well-established name and good performance but it sadly dosen't work as well as it should on Android.

Opera's my favorite.  It's feature-full, the UI's pretty good, and you can enable "turbo" mode which makes it use their internet servers to pre-render your pages and reduce your bandwidth and processing requirement if you want.  It's the browser that better handle zooming and reflowing text on the pages you view, and it's handling of tabs is very good.

One last thing to consider is the browser you use on your PC.  All browsers try to sync your bookmarks and other data between your mobile and PC.  So if you prefer Firefox, Chrome or Opera on your computer, using it's Android counterpart might be the natural and logical thing to do.  Or the other way around... I'd never really used Opera before, but since I use it on Android I started using it on my PC too.

Got root?

If you're not familiar with Unix, root is the equivalent of the windows administrator account.  If you actually are familiar with Unix, please forgive me for putting it that way :-P

What does that have to do with your phone?  Good question.  Android is based on Linux.  It's a multiuser system, with restricted user accounts and an unrestricted root account.  All applications are "sandboxed" through their user account's privileges, which roughly translates as "use the device, don't mess with it".  And that's good, as you don't want the latest Angry Bird app you installed to wipe your contact data or format your SD card.

But if you're a power user, you may want to do more than just install apps that will fill the screen and play sounds.  Maybe you want to install apps that actually require root privileges to run, like DroidWall or Titanium Backup.  Maybe you want to customize your system beyond what's available in the settings menu, like changing the splash screen, or installing a whole different ROM (that's a copy of the whole OS, that replaces the one provided by your device manufacturer). Or maybe, just being the power user that you are, you want to satisfy your curiosity, look inside those forbidden directories and tune things to your liking.  That device is yours, isn't it?  Why would you be prevented to do as you please with it?

Acquiring root privilege on your android device, or "rooting" it, can be a more or less challenging process depending on your device manufacturer, model, and firmware version.  If you're lucky, it's as simple as downloading an application to your phone, running it and pressing the magic button.  Or you may have to reboot into download mode, replace the kernel (that's the heart of the OS), put your device in debug mode and use PC software to enable the root account through it's USB connection.  And if you're really unlucky, the manufacturer just provided a firmware upgrade that breaks all know rooting methods.  Then you can either wait for some kind hacker to provide a new rooting method for it, or find a way to downgrade to a previous "unsecured" version.

What's the end result?  A new program, called su (for Switch User) controlled by a "SuperUser" application.  When an app wants to break free of it's restriction, it calls su and you'll be prompted by SuperUser to allow or deny access.

From that point on, you're free.  You can mess with your system or replace it altogether.  If you're familar with the Unix shell, you can login and play around.  I strongly advise that your first step be doing a complete backup, using an application such as ROM Manager (if your device's supported).  Then install a "normal" backup app, like Titanium Backup, and start backing up your configurations and applications data.  That way, if things turn for the worst, you'll be able to get back on your feets without pain.  I speak from personal experience here...

Want to know more? Just ask below

Automation, or putting Smart back in smartphone

So... what's a "smart" phone?

Judging by what's available on the market, a smartphone is a portable computer that also acts as a phone.  Truth is, even though it's featureful, it's no smarter than a calculator.

Enters Tasker.

The sad thing is, you shouldn't have to purchase this app.  It should just be part of Android.  But until this happens, Tasker is the one app every power user should get.

What is Tasker?  To me, it's a way to access to the OS' full API without having to write java programs.  According to the developer, it's an app that performs tasks (actions) based on contexts (triggers).

Let's look at a few examples:

Tasker, please...
Disable screen timeout when I'm reading a book or using google maps
Change my wallpaper and ringtone when I'm in the office
Put the phone on vibration when I'm in a meeting
Disable email notifications at night
Remember where I park my car and help me find it if I forget
And much much more...

Actually, take a look here for sample profiles that you can download and customize to your liking.

OK, I know, there's a learning curve.  You'll have to spend an hour or two reading the doc and trying it out.  But hey, you've got an Android in your hand; not a beautiful but severely limited I-thing; not an I've got a keyboard but no real Internet access Berrything.  A fully customizable and hackable Android.  Do yourself a favor and not only customize our device, but make it "smart" enough to do the right thing, at the right time, all the time.

Find this helpful?  Have questions?  Comment below!

Live wallpapers

Name the 1st thing that separate Android phones from everything else.

To me, what comes to mind are widgets and live wallpapers.

Live wallpapers change your screen from some static windows-desktop-like image into an enjoyable dynamic show.  Makes it a pleasure to look at every time.

My first android wallpaper, and still my favorite, is Koi Live.  This top view of a beautiful pond filled with Koi fishes swimming around isn't only gorgeous, it also reacts to your input, sending ripples across the water when you touch the screen.

There's a whole lot of live wallpapers (LWPs) available, but those from Kittehface Software are especially good.  They include, in addition to Koi Live, the following:

Thunderstorm, a cloud-filled sky with frequent lightning strikes
Galactic Core, a nice spinning galaxy that also reacts to your input
Blue Skies, another one of my favorites, but it seems to cause launcher slowdowns and crashes on some devices
and Silhouette, a dynamic sunset view with a few surprises that I'll let you discover :)

- Correction Feb 04 -
The sunrise wallpaper that offer you morning surprises is Sun Rise by Teragon.  The background's similar to Silhouette but it's got it's own personal touch that you'll love.

All of those are offered in two versions; A free one, that's fully functional, ad-free and doesn't require any system permission, and a Donation one, that offers many customization options for 99 cents.

Whatever device you have, download a few of those and give them a try.  Chances are you'll love the life they bring to your screen :)

Let there be light!

Light.  One thing that's so useful when you need it but that you never carry around.

Many android devices are equipped with a pretty decent light to be used as your camera's flash.  But while it's not officially suggested you use it as a flashlight when you're stuck in a dark corner, many apps offer just that.

My favorite one is Tiny Flashlight.

First, because of it's nice customizable widget that let you control the light from one touch.  And because it's free and works great.  But you may also like it's other features, like turning the screen white, or any color of your choice, if your device dosen't have a camera flash, or it's other less obviously useful features like strobe and "police" light.

In any case, I wouldn't carry an android without it installed and readily available.

Alarm Clocks

I now totally depend on my Android to wake up in the morning.

The obvious reasons are that contrary to my bedside table's alarm clock, I can have any number of alarms, that rings on different days (and don't ring on weekends), using any sound or song I want.  But there's a few more advantages to alarm clock apps.

Interesting features include naps (ring in X minutes), speak on wake (use Text To Speech to say the time or weather), night clock mode (if you dock your phone), snooze and dismiss control (like requiring to solve a math question to turn off the alarm, to make sure you're really up) and, one of my favorite, "gentle" alarm.  This plays your selected sound at a slowly increasing volume to wake you up gently :)

There's many good alarm clock apps with similar features, but playing with the main ones got me to choose Alarm Clock Plus.  It offers all of the above features in a clean packages, and comes with a neat clock widget.

If you're using android's default alarm clock, or worst, still relying on that old beige thing beside your bed, head over to the market and download something that will wake you up in a more enjoyable way while letting you sleep later when you can.

Keyboards

Chances are you'll spend a bit of time and effort typing on your android device.  As the default keyboard is rather basic, it's definitely worth looking at the alternatives for something that will make the experience more efficient and enjoyable.

There's three main ways to type on Android, each with it's following.  There's standard typing; there's sliding across letters; and there's suggestion picking.

For the latter, SwiftKey X Keyboard is quite impressive.  It supports different languages, automatically switch to the one you're using, and the relevancy of the suggestions will blow your mind.  When I tried it, I could type whole sentences with just a few letters.  For example, typing "G" as a first letter will bring "Good" and a suggestion, and picking it will suggest "morning" for the second word.  The sentences just build themselves...

On the down side, there's a version for tablets and it's sold separately.   So if that's the right keyboard for you, you may have to pay for it twice to have the same experience across all of your portable devices.  Considering that the value of this keyboard resides in it's suggestion engine and not in the graphical layout, you're really purchasing the same thing twice :(


What if don't like hitting keys and prefer sliding across instead?  I never developed the technique, so I can't bring personal experience.  Many phones come with a swype keyboard to tempt you in, and the market offers SlikeIT Keyboard which have good reviews and comments.  Might be worth giving it a look...


And now for the last type, which I prefer.  Keyboard are meant for typing right?  My personal favorite is Thumb Keyboard.  The value of this keyboard comes from it's different layouts and customization options.  It offers different layouts for phones and tablets and different ones in portraits and landscape modes, all to make better use of the available screen real estate.

You can add or remove rows for arrow keys, special keys, completion words, resize the keys to your liking, change the skin to anything from boring clones of the competing mobile OS' gray keyboards to neon-lit keys over the background image of your choice.


Now for a bonus app...  Say you have a lot of typing to do.  Nothing beats a real, physical keyboard right?  There's many bluetooth keyboards available that will (almost) turn your phone into a portable PC.  Perfect for sysadmin support over the weekend anyway...

If you do purchase such a device, head over to the market and install Null Keyboard.  Null keyboard offers just what the name implies; no keyboard.  This way you'll prevent the on-screen keyboard from popping up and clogging the screen when it's not needed :)