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Thursday, February 4, 2010

Android Apps I Cannot Live Without

Yes, I am well aware that everyone and their brother is babbling on about their favorite Android applications.  So stop yer bitchin'.  I'm obviously not the first to annoy you!  I'm writing this because after reading about what everyone else loves, I am surprised that my list doesn't have what I expected.  Please note:  I'm too damned lazy to included links, but if you type in the title to the Android Marketplace, you'll find these pronto.

Music Related


Tunewiki - I've tried so many music applications.  Its not that I didn't like the one that came with my Droid, because it does a fine job.  I just like extras.  An application that provides me with the lyrics of songs and allows me to blip to Twitter wins.  Not only does it do that, but it seems to "read" the file properties of songs better than other players.  I don't have near the "unknown artist" issues utilizing this library than I do with other programs that I've tried and deleted.  I was going to name them for you, until I realized that once I decided on Tunewiki, I deleted the others and my old mind flushed them to make room for more information!  Oh - I almost forgot, right from the program you can choose to make any song your ringtone.  Nice.

Shazam- Shit - this is the coolest application ever. I used to take pictures of my favorite songs and new bands on my satellite radio to remember what they were.  Now I just press Tag Now and with the exception of TWO songs, it finds the song, artist, and will try to make the connection to YouTube or AmazonMP3 to purchase the song.  I use this program more often than any other on my Droid.  It has actually made an impact on my life.  Seriously.

Album Art Grabber - It is so frakking annoying when you download something and the album art doesn't come with it.  Or if your player doesn't bother to search the web for your art. Album Art Grabber actually give you an assortment of art to pick from.  If I don't like the original cover, I can use one that was for a single.  I like options.

MP3Tagger - since I sometimes get music from online "friends", it doesn't always come with the proper labeling to be seen in the right spot of my music library. This handy dandy tool lets you change the properties of MP3 files only so you can find the little buggers.

Other Stuff


I still haven't settled on a lot of things.  For texting, I tried HandCent which seems to have a good rep, but there was just something annoying about it.  I have now moved on to ChompSMS, but I'm not really sure what it is supposed to do. They want you to buy something or other (points??) to completely use their product, but other than that it just reminds me of HandCent, minus the bugaboos.

Tweeting was previously done with Twitdroid, but the free version doesn't support bit.ly, which is my favorite URL shortener.  Today I switched to Seesmic, and it seems to be doing exactly what I want.  If it falls by the wayside, I'll let you know!

I use Ringdroid to create ringtones from my library of music.  You can pick whatever part of the song you like and trim it and make your ringtone.  There were a couple others I tried, but this one works perfect every time, so I can't figure out why I would bother with anything else.

I use Jetflicks! (and you have to pay for it!) for TV and movie viewing.  They have whole programs to view and when I'm at lunch or just hanging around the office being bored, I can watch a program.  Yay!  What could be bad about that?

There are a lot of other choices, but nothing that has been life altering.  Not Android specific is Google Voice.  The best thing about this is the voice mail transcription.  I absolutely hate using the phone if I don't have to, and I really like receiving transcribed voice mails.  I also like that I can record a call at the press of a button, that all of my other Google services are all tied together, etc.  Android is fabulous when you actually utilize the Google products to the extent I do.

So there you have it.  My contribution to the Droid application wars.  Whoopthefuckindoo.