Non-game Android Apps Recommendations Catch-All

Putting a podcast in the playlist is about a five click process in Doggcatcher. I've used both for months at a time, and I MUCH prefer PocketCast's way of doing things.

I think Doggcatcher's problem is it tries to do everything for everybody. It's just had so many little obscure things added to it that it's a navigational nightmare to me.

But if you guys are happy, great. Other than it's stability and it's ability to use Presto (also in Pocket Casts), I don't like much about Doggcatcher.

EDIT: Tanglebones, Doggcatcher's still pretty stable for me at 2.2X playback speed. So it's another YMMV I guess.

Huh, maybe that's it, I've never really set up a playlist. I have my podcast themselves ordered in my preferred priority, and they just autoplay one after the other after being downloaded.

Veloxi wrote:

Huh, maybe that's it, I've never really set up a playlist. I have my podcast themselves ordered in my preferred priority, and they just autoplay one after the other after being downloaded.

I vary the order depending on my mood. So the auto sorting by priority doesn't work for me. I wish it did.

But that brings up another thing. I once tried to use that, but it took me awhile to figure out how to prioritize my feeds. Why? Because to change the order in a playlist, it's drag and drop. Yet on the feed priority, it's long press>Move up/down>then click where you want the feed to move and it will slot it in above. And to get to the "Move up/down", it's not even on the list that immediately shows up on the long press, you have to scroll down a ways to find it.

Why in the world design two different interfaces for a pretty similar task of reordering things?

Admittedly, Doggcatcher is not overly complex to interact with, it's just that PocketCasts is so much simpler, and makes much more sense. Switching to gain stability at the cost of better usability is an easier pill to swallow than the reverse, but I'll still complain.

I haven't had any stability issues with Pocket Casts yet -- sounds like I've been lucky!

pneuman wrote:

I haven't had any stability issues with Pocket Casts yet -- sounds like I've been lucky!

Enjoy it. I don't know if it's my phone or what the issue is. As soon as I upgrade phones I'll try to switch back.

pneuman wrote:

I haven't had any stability issues with Pocket Casts yet -- sounds like I've been lucky!

Me neither. Mine's been fine! The only issue is that it sometimes "hiccups" and can't finish downloading a 100+ MB video file, in which case I just start the download again and it completes. Other than that, it works great!

I noticed that SwiftKey 3 has a regular and tablet edition. What would people recommend for the Nexus 7 given that its pretty small?

I've been using the regular SwiftKey on my Nexus 7. Holding it vertically, it's about the same size as my Galaxy Nexus keyboard when holding that horizontally. It works well, in my opinion. I tried the tablet edition, but I don't think it was updated properly when I did, because it seemed buggy.

NSMike wrote:

I've been using the regular SwiftKey on my Nexus 7. Holding it vertically, it's about the same size as my Galaxy Nexus keyboard when holding that horizontally. It works well, in my opinion. I tried the tablet edition, but I don't think it was updated properly when I did, because it seemed buggy.

OK thanks, I may just get the regular once since its on sale for a buck.

There is a month long trial for the tablet edition. Try it out. It's working just fine for me.

Does anyone constantly hit the home button rather than the space bar on the Nexus 7?

I tried Swiftkey, and couldn't get on with it. Does it need much time to learn?

I'm doing that much more often lately than when I started using it.

spider_j wrote:

Does anyone constantly hit the home button rather than the space bar on the Nexus 7?

I tried Swiftkey, and couldn't get on with it. Does it need much time to learn?

Did you let it sift through your Twitter, Facebook and whatever else accounts? That speeds things up, but is ... scary. Regardless, it'll take a few days or weeks for you to get more frequently used words into the dictionary, especially when it comes to writing about games and whatnot. Stick with it a bit longer, everything takes a bit of an adjustment.

Loved Swift pretty much since the first moment I installed it.

QQ, any good recommendations for audio+notes app? I'm trying out AudioNote Lite which records the audio and the notes playback at the place in time when you jotted them down.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...

I'm liking it, but not loving it.
I'm looking for the ability to go through the entire notes at a glance or listen and read as the audio plays on.
Any suggestions?

The final day of $0.25 apps and games over at Google Play is upon us! Here's a full list (via Android Central) of what is $0.25.

I already picked up Great Big War Game. Nice to see a pretty new title appearing on this list!

Assistant https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.speaktoit.assistant is a really fun app. I've bean playing around with this virtually assistant for a bit. I was able to name it but it took awhile. The app kept hearing Ebay instead of Edi. When I got Edi it pronounced it like "E" "I" instead of "E" "D". So I typed the name Edee and now it sounds correct. Yeah I named it after the mass effect AI program.

Then I changed it's looks. I wish there were more options like maybe a darth vader.

Once I got the look and name done I started asking it questions. I asked the weather and it told me the weather. I ask it for sex. It said don't be rude. I asked it what should I do today. It checked my google calendar and told me I didn't have any plans for today. I told it to add the presidential debate. It did and it asked me was everything correct. I said to change the time to 6:00 pm and it did it.

I know I could have done that with voice thingy but it was more fun with virtual girl. I'm going to see if it will kill for me next.

I don't recall if someone talked about Thumb Keyboard but it is currently 50% off. I like it more than swiftkey. A lot more options and works with both phones and tablets.

OMG I LOVE Thumb Keyboard. It's soo awesome, get it if you can.

Out of Milk = It is a grocery list app that can also be used for to do lists. The cool thing is you can access and update your lists from the web or ipod app. You can also share your lists with other people.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Out of Milk = It is a grocery list app that can also be used for to do lists. The cool thing is you can access and update your lists from the web or ipod app. You can also share your lists with other people.

I use OurGroceries which has the same features. I tried Out Of Milk, I wish I could remember why I went with OurGroceries instead.

Either way, the functionality is awesome, especially the sharing lists between people.

Does Out of Milk sync changes to lists between users and devices?

General Crespin wrote:

Does Out of Milk sync changes to lists between users and devices?

Yes it does. You can set it up so users can update your lists or just view them.

Is there a port of Truecrypt for Android?

Can anyone recommend an application locker that has an option for pattern unlock and can't simply be killed via the task manager?

And I'll be damned if I can understand why Google has three or four different chat programs that do basically the same thing but none of which can be uninstalled.

Baron Of Hell wrote:
General Crespin wrote:

Does Out of Milk sync changes to lists between users and devices?

Yes it does. You can set it up so users can update your lists or just view them.

Any comparisons to Remember the Milk? I'm trying out a few task/to-do list apps to share with my wife. We both have Android phones.

I haven't used Remember the milk in over a year but when I did there was delay in the list updating and sometimes I couldn't use it when I didn't have a connection.

Answered a few of my own questions.

EDS can open specific Truecrypt containers. Works pretty well. Haven't tried the paid version yet where you can mount the containers as if they're storage so any app can access the contents.

Smart App Protector works pretty well. There's a few quirks where sometimes when you resume you can see an instant of the program before the lock screen comes up. But it can be setup so it's very difficult, if not impossible, to uninstall.

Avast is fantastic. You can firewall a program so it doesn't have internet access (nice for those apps which are handy, but have iffy permissions, as long as they don't need internet access). It also has built-in theft detection that can even survive a device wipe.

I don't like the interface for Dolphin, but its features are hard to argue with. Especially considering how anemic Firefox add-ons for Android are.

The only Apple device I've owned is my iPod Touch 1st generation, but I never thought I'd consider decent clock and calendar software to be killer apps. Since Android doesn't seem to have anything native that's as polished, I'll have to go Market hunting. And god, even with Appbrain, the Android market is a clusterf*ck.

I can't seem to get Bluetooth up and running between my laptop and tablet with ES File Manager. Not sure what I'm doing wrong there.

Transitioning to a tablet from a laptop, one thing I miss is the Firefox Evernote Clearly add-on. Pocket and other alternatives just don't cut it. Whenever I save an article with Pocket, then create an Evernote note with it, for some reason it removes any and all images. Not especially useful for my purposes.

On the bright side, my Kindle mounts just like an external hard drive, so it's possible to manage my eBooks purely from the tablet.

Poweramp, where have you been all my life? It pops up all the time on Lifehacker, and I wondered what made it so great. Now I know.

ComicRack for Android seems just as good, if not better, than the desktop equivalent.

Android browsers are ... lame.

I didn't realize how heavily I had come to depend on my various extensions, and without them everything feels clunky.

I just want Lastpass, Evernote, and Xmarks to work in harmony. But Evernote support on Android lags behind the desktop, which seems bizarre. No Evernote Clearly, no extension support for anything but Dolphin, which may be the best of a bad lot but whose interface I despise.

I've tried saving articles to Pocket, then saving it as an Evernote clip, but for some maddening reason it reduces everything to text-only and removes all images. Useless.

Firefox for Android's add-on catalog is beyond anemic.

Part of the reason I was excited about a tablet was the opportunity to streamline my online research/clipping. But I was better off in Windows 7.

On the other hand, Pulse has completely changed my news intake/breakfast routine. If newspapers were sorted that way and subscriber based, I'd pay up for my local news. Too bad the Picayune is a hot mess and focused on the suburbs.

ComicRack is fantastic. I wish comics you bought on Comixology could get read via ComicRack.

Purchased PowerAmp. Feature-rich is an understatement, and I actually wish it had a "simple mode". Honestly, things like when I click shuffle there are four types of shuffle I've never heard of confuse the crap out of me at first. I expect that type of functionality to work like every other player on the planet: shuffling the songs in my current playlist. By default it shuffles ALL songs. Things like that. But damn, it's handy with the EQs and widgets.

Titanium has even more features than I remember. Being able to zap bloatware is great, and to freeze apps that I don't want to uninstall but want off my apps drawer. Now if only I could do that with widgets ...

Chrome on Android is pretty nice, especially when you sync it with your desktop Chrome.

Yeah Chrome has been great. Have to have ICS or JB to use it, but it's great.