Non-game Android Apps Recommendations Catch-All

http://www.androidincanada.ca/news/g...

Google Music coming to Canada!
WOOT
I've had it for a while since I could hack it onto my phone using a DNS spoof but now we will have access to the catalogue and friends/family can now get on board and not have to hack .

YAY

SixteenBlue wrote:

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

Without extensions, I find them both disappointing.

Pulse only saves the URL to Evernote, turnsout I'm not crazy and Pocket only saves text, and the Dolphin addon randomly gives errors about the article being too big, even for pages that are only a few paragraphs.

I haven't tried Instapaper and Evernote, but I'm loathe to buy an app only to find out it won't save images to Evernote. The 15 minute market window is frustrating.

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Has anyone come across a good programming tutorial for children?

I know of a few on the web, but it might be a little easier to point my daughter (who is 9) at an app on the Nexus 7. I hope for something that will be as appealing as a game, rather than feeling primarily dry and educational.

unntrlaffinity wrote:

Without extensions, I find them both disappointing.

...Pocket only saves text

That, friend, is a selling point. Still, the overflow menu at the top of the screen can change you over to Web view rather than the text-centric Article view.

Kurrelgyre wrote:
unntrlaffinity wrote:

Without extensions, I find them both disappointing.

...Pocket only saves text

That, friend, is a selling point. Still, the overflow menu at the top of the screen can change you over to Web view rather than the text-centric Article view.

It doesn't matter what view you're using, when you clip to Evernote it discards images.

Linking your Evernote account to your Instapaper web account works pretty well. Not as nice as Evernote Clearly for the desktop, but pretty good. Automatically saves articles you like to Evernote, complete with images at the end.

I think I'll buy the Evernote app and do a year subscription online just for that.

MikeSands wrote:

Has anyone come across a good programming tutorial for children?

I know of a few on the web, but it might be a little easier to point my daughter (who is 9) at an app on the Nexus 7. I hope for something that will be as appealing as a game, rather than feeling primarily dry and educational.

Maybe some Logo variant for Android? This article mentions Logo and a few other little tools, but they all do not seem to be polished to the max and still need guidance, either through you or a few paragraphs from a book.

The Little Schemer could also be a good intro book. It has a certain stile that no other programming book I have encountered used and it appears to me a bit more beginner friendly.

Edit: Take a peek on Squeak! How could I have forgotten Squeak ...

Thanks for that, Plastefuchs, I'll check those out.

Does anyone know how often market apps do a license check? The reviews in some of the apps I have purchased or intend to purchase complain that apps won't run if you're offline.

I have easy internet access now, but when I'm actively backpacking I can easily go days or weeks without internet. Just because I'm motorbiking in the countryside doesn't mean I don't want to still read a few comics or watch a movie before bed.

Some, like my app protector, I obviously want running all the time, regardless of internet access. Others, like ComicRack, I frequently use with the WiFi turned off. It seems stupid, but I have frozen versions of the free versions of these apps as a backup, but I'd prefer to not brother with crap like that for items I've purchased.

Decided to just block my paid apps with Avast firewall and see how long it takes to complain.

News reader apps have totally changed how I take in the news. Pulse is my go-to, but I'm warming to Google Currents and News360.

The Pulse layout is great for viewing lots of headlines at once, and browsing through them very quickly. I use it when I'm eating breakfast and just want an overview of the day's topics, and Pulse's included "Best of" news feeds are good for that. I also use it for anything I read from an RSS source.

The RSS sources can be quirky, though. You're at the mercy of however that particular site is setup. Sometimes the RSS feeds take a long time to update, so you won't see newer stories.

Google Currents has a magazine like view. Sometimes navigating it is a bit odd, and I get kicked back to the home screen with an inadvertent Back press (if there's a consistent logic to how Android treats the Back button, it eludes me).

The magazine layout seems to only exist for sites that have designed their content to be presented in that fashion, with all the various categories. When it's combined with a time-based category or feed, this is fantastic. But otherwise, with sites like Slate, you'll have to click on like 8 different categories if you want to ensure that you've seen every new story. I'm thorough like that, so it bugs me.

On the other hand, using pure RSS feeds in Google Currents kind of defeats the purpose, since the content will ONLY be in chronological order.

News360 is neat for new content discovery. I generally leave out any sources that I've already got covered in Pulse (my RSS feeds) or Currents (with content designed specifically for the magazine layouts). You can search for generic terms like "Movies" or "Crime", and it aggregates lots of stories.

One great feature is that when a story has many different sources, it'll present them up top with lots of tabs, and display the images from those stories in a scrolling bar on the right.

It also supposedly learns your habits and makes suggestions, but I haven't been using it long enough to see the benefits.

I usually like to find one app that's "good enough" in the categories I consider most important, but I've made my piece with this trilogy. Pulse is fast and chronological. Google Currents has a snazzy layout, and is great for when I want to read individual stories and sources with more depth than my breakfast browsing. And News360 picks up on a lot of stories I'd otherwise miss because they don't fall into my RSS/source bubbles.

They all have share capabilities, so I use Instapaper with all of them to save stories. Then later in Instapaper I "like" stories to send them automatically into Evernote. A little more roundabout than just having something like Evernote Clearly, and sometimes the images are all inserted at the end of the articles instead of throughout, but at least it saves them. And it beats the standard Evernote clipping functions that just save the URLs.

One caveat with Instapaper, Currents only shares to Instapaper if you've got the app installed. News360 and Pulse are perfectly happy to link up with your web account and ignore the app.

If I had to pick two, I'd go with Pulse and Currents. News360 can be extremely slow at times, whether it's simply loading new stories or opening one you've clicked on. It also has the occasional crash, something that hasn't stood out for me on Currents or Pulse.

If I had to choose one, I'd pick Pulse. The Currents layout is pretty, but you can really only browse one source at a time. With Pulse you can flip through multiple feeds pretty quickly, and separate the content into paged tabs (News360 does this as well, but it's a bit muddy and unresponsive at times).

Snapseed has come to Android.
Very cool photo editing app that uses gestures to edit your photos.
Here's a little ditty i just did.

IMAGE(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-KTHrUfnmdDI/UMDIOHv02gI/AAAAAAAAPRI/NWDIRJLh-ps/s575/FogTrees_0.jpg)

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

TerraTime, long one of my favorite Android apps, has added a Globe Daydream, if you're on Android 4.2. It's purdy.

What's a Globe Daydream?

Also, is it just me, or does anyone wish the Market had a wishlist of sorts?

Any recommendations on a good NFC app? I've been using "NFC task launcher" and it's okay but I was hoping for something better.

Veloxi wrote:

What's a Globe Daydream?

Also, is it just me, or does anyone wish the Market had a wishlist of sorts?

Good lord yes.

A daydream in a new thing in 4.2, which seems to be a screensaver of sorts. I haven't tried it, since I use a Smart Cover on my N7. I assume that the one that the General is talking about is a Globe one.

Any live wallpaper suggestions? I've been using GyroSpace 3D, which is one of those things that make people say "Wow!" when they look at my tablet.

Veloxi wrote:

Also, is it just me, or does anyone wish the Market had a wishlist of sorts?

It does. It's there on the app at least.

CannibalCrowley wrote:
Veloxi wrote:

Also, is it just me, or does anyone wish the Market had a wishlist of sorts?

It does. It's there on the app at least.

Affirmative. I use it all the time. I wish discovery was better though. Be nice to have filters like you do on Google search or Amazon. Date range, minimum review score, last update, etc.

A nice feature of the wishlist is that if an app goes on sale, its current price is shown. Great for those apps you're on the fence about.

Do any of you use a battery saver app like Green Power or Juice Defender?

I've tried 'em, but they just seemed to make things worse. :/

CannibalCrowley wrote:

Do any of you use a battery saver app like Green Power or Juice Defender?

Not since 4.1 fixed all my battery woes.

I'm currently using this kernel for my N4, whose aggressive tweaks really helped my stand-by and general battery life. Depending on your hardware there might be a similar kernel.

I have MX Player on a Nexus 7, but can't get the subtitles to display at the bottom. They always show in about the middle of the screen. I tried setting the bottom margins to zero, but no dice. Any ideas?

cheesycrouton wrote:

Any ideas?

use VPlayer?

RockPlayer is actually free.

Although I think it's moved off-market now. Last time I updated it it downloaded it's own thing and doesn't show up in my apps anymore.

But whatever, it works, it works well, it's played everything I throw at it, and free.

I use Dice Player which has played everything I have so far. Its funny how the stock player is completely useless.

I like HTC's stock player actually. It can push music from my NAS jukebox straight to my receiver. Not too many players in the market allow you to use a remote DLNA server AND a remote DLNA player.

Any recommendations for a good PDF reader with annotation capability? I'd like the equivalent of putting a sticky note onto a particular page, and some way to highlight text. Ideally, I want a semi-transparent rectangular overlay that I can easily slide up and down the page, and which conforms to the columns of text. (E.g. a highlight overlaying one line worth of text in a column, or a highlight line over the entire page.

I want to use this for knitting patterns, specifically ones with charts, so saving my place is important, and easily changing the location of the visible bookmark is also important.

We have a Nexus 7, if that makes a difference.

Someone recommended Carbon, the best Twitter client for WebOS, now available for Android.

I love the UI; loading images seems to take a few seconds longer than Plume.
Also, no TweetMarker integration, which is now a deal breaker for me.

Katy wrote:

Any recommendations for a good PDF reader with annotation capability? I'd like the equivalent of putting a sticky note onto a particular page, and some way to highlight text. Ideally, I want a semi-transparent rectangular overlay that I can easily slide up and down the page, and which conforms to the columns of text. (E.g. a highlight overlaying one line worth of text in a column, or a highlight line over the entire page.

I want to use this for knitting patterns, specifically ones with charts, so saving my place is important, and easily changing the location of the visible bookmark is also important.

We have a Nexus 7, if that makes a difference.

I don't have too much experience with different PDF readers, but I did purchase ezPDF reader back in the day for underlining and annotating PDF's. It has sticky notes as well.

That's the only one I ever tried really. I focused more on epub's, so I tried a few of those readers like Moon Reader and Mantano.

ezPDF reader has nice page-turn effects as well! bling bling