Non-game Android Apps Recommendations Catch-All

Doggcatcher, Pocket Casts, and Beyond Pod I think are the top three. I don't like the interface for Doggcatcher, but it's probably overall more flexible. If you're coming from a fairly basic Listen experience, I think Pocket Casts would probably be better for you. Never used Beyond Pod, so can't talk to it.

If you export your opml file from Google Reader, you should be able to import your current subscriptions to any of them.

How many times is the podcast app discussion going to come up in this thread?

Probably when there's one app to rule them all.

Imho Pocket Casts > Beyond Pod > DoggCatcher. Like Mannish said, the interface is just bad.

Now, in Pocket Casts, I can't figure out how to get new episodes to download automatically anytime I open the app. I always have to press the download button for each podcast. Anyone know how to change that?

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Imho Pocket Casts > Beyond Pod > DoggCatcher. Like Mannish said, the interface is just bad.

Now, in Pocket Casts, I can't figure out how to get new episodes to download automatically anytime I open the app. I always have to press the download button for each podcast. Anyone know how to change that?

I think this is how it works, but I haven't tested it, yet. Select the Playlist you want to auto-download (I tried Unplayed). Hit the option menu button (3 vertical squares) and select playlist settings. Check Auto Download.

Pocket Cast. Go to the main menu (hit left on top bar until you see Podcasts & Discover up near the top of the page). There's a menu button down at the bottom of that screen. Hit it, then Episode updates. Refresh on app open. That gets it doing it when you open the app.

Also, you can go under the default audio podcast play. Hit the three vertical dots on the top right of the playlist page, and there are auto-dowload settings there.

What's a good app to find hotels, restaurants, and attractions around a location? Basically I'd like to put in a location (for me, right now, it is Knoebel's Amusement Park in PA) and find nearby hotels.

I use Pocket Cast too. I discovered a wrinkle in how I had set it up last week. When I finished listening to a podcast, I thought that it was deleting it. It wasn't; it was just hiding it. I had 2GB of podcasts sitting on my phone!

I couldn't get on with the interface of BeyondPod at all, but Pocket Casts seems good (caveat: I downloaded it last night ...)

So I now have a Nexus 4, coming from an iPhone 4. So far I'm liking it, but all my music and stuff is still in iTunes, and I still have an iPad so I can't dump iTunes altogether. Currently I'm just using the default music player, and copied a load of tracks over manually using usb. Used to be doubletwist would read the iTunes library, but it doesn't seem to support the Nexus 4.

There seem to be a range of options. What are people here using on their PCs and phones for syncing and playing music?

Subsonic for me.

babakotia wrote:

I couldn't get on with the interface of BeyondPod at all, but Pocket Casts seems good (caveat: I downloaded it last night ...)

So I now have a Nexus 4, coming from an iPhone 4. So far I'm liking it, but all my music and stuff is still in iTunes, and I still have an iPad so I can't dump iTunes altogether. Currently I'm just using the default music player, and copied a load of tracks over manually using usb. Used to be doubletwist would read the iTunes library, but it doesn't seem to support the Nexus 4.

There seem to be a range of options. What are people here using on their PCs and phones for syncing and playing music?

I just used Play Music to upload my library to Google's cloud, then play whatever I want. Pinning stuff occasionally to stay resident on the phone.

MannishBoy wrote:

I just used Play Music to upload my library to Google's cloud, then play whatever I want. Pinning stuff occasionally to stay resident on the phone.

Me, too. I left my 8000+ songs on an external drive in my office at a university and leeched their ridiculous upload speeds to put everything in the cloud. It only worked for the DRM-free iTunes files, though.

I'm using Google Play All Access now, though, so that whole library is rendered somewhat moot... Still, it's really useful to set up playlists through a web browser, "pin" it to download to the phone, and then change the playlist through the web browser and have those songs upload or delete automatically from the phone.

The Future!

Anyone else checking out the app Locket? It's an app that pays you for unlocking your phone from it's sleep state. It isn't much (1¢ per unlock, 3¢ per hour), but it is real money for something everyone does multiple times a day anyway. Sadly I can't embed the intro video, though it can be found on the Google Play site.

EDIT: Self promotion seemed a little greedy/spammy, I decided any money I get out of referrals, at least until tomorrow, is going toward community gifts in the steam sale. If you would like to help me with that, you can find the link in this thread.

Man, PocketCasts really looks nifty and clean, but it does show that my Desire Z is over 2 years old. I am still of the opinion that DoggCatcher is not that much worse than PocketCasts. It might be not as sleek and lack the native variable playback, but it is as functional as PC.

Nevin73 wrote:

What's a good app to find hotels, restaurants, and attractions around a location? Basically I'd like to put in a location (for me, right now, it is Knoebel's Amusement Park in PA) and find nearby hotels.

Yelp?

Not sure how good it would be for hotels as I only use it for food stuff.

Plastefuchs wrote:

Man, PocketCasts really looks nifty and clean, but it does show that my Desire Z is over 2 years old. I am still of the opinion that DoggCatcher is not that much worse than PocketCasts. It might be not as sleek and lack the native variable playback, but it is as functional as PC.

Doggcatcher works, but it has a horribly convoluted interface. Just not user friendly. You can get used to it (I did), but I just don't like it's design.

That said, Pocket Cast has it's on issues in a few areas that I actually liked the older version better for. I just think it's still a better design.

Anyone have any experience with FolderSync?

I'm switching from a Windows Phone to an Android phone (Nexus 4), and the only feature I've really missed are the automatic backups of my pictures to SkyDrive. I can use the SkyDrive app to upload my pictures manually, but I'd rather have an automated option. (The built-in uploading to Google+ isn't really something I'm interested in doing.) FolderSync popped up in searches around the Play Store, but I thought I'd check here first.

If you have Dropbox, it has the automatic camera sync too as does the Facebook app. I know it doesn't solve your SkyDrive problem, but it may help alleviate it if you use either of those services.

So, folks thought on anti virus and theft recovery apps? Necessary or just a drain on resources. Recommendations?

Personally, I don't run any antivirus apps. I do have SeekDroid installed, though I've never had to use it. SeekDroid periodically goes on sale (I have it from Amazon Appstore, but Google Play has had it for $0.99 on occasion), so it may be one to keep an eye out for.

I use a combo of Seek Droid and Lookout. I really don't care too much yet about anti-malware, but the location and remote wipe functionality makes me feel better.

Most of the talk on XDA seems to be that unless you are installing apps from non-secure locations (i.e. anywhere other than the play store) you don't need anti-virus and it will only drain your battery, etc.

Kestrel wrote:

Most of the talk on XDA seems to be that unless you are installing apps from non-secure locations (i.e. anywhere other than the play store) you don't need anti-virus and it will only drain your battery, etc.

I think that's funny, coming from the site where everybody roots their phones (makes them less secure) and installs all kinds of random apks.

That site is quite big. You can have both and more people arguing about that on it and still have room for Windows Phone discussions.

I'm looking for a birthday reminder app that lets me:

- import Google & Facebook contacts
- choose when to remind me

Any recommendations?

I just upgraded to 4.3 on my N4. Unfortunately this means I have to use hangouts vs talk. Which means I can't tell if someone is active or away anymore.

Anybody have a good IM client to replace hangouts?

Secret Asian Man wrote:

I just upgraded to 4.3 on my N4. Unfortunately this means I have to use hangouts vs talk. Which means I can't tell if someone is active or away anymore.

Anybody have a good IM client to replace hangouts?

I've seen talk on XDA about uninstalling Hangouts and reinstalling the Voice apk.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Anyone have any experience with FolderSync?

I'm switching from a Windows Phone to an Android phone (Nexus 4), and the only feature I've really missed are the automatic backups of my pictures to SkyDrive. I can use the SkyDrive app to upload my pictures manually, but I'd rather have an automated option. (The built-in uploading to Google+ isn't really something I'm interested in doing.) FolderSync popped up in searches around the Play Store, but I thought I'd check here first.

I got FolderSync and it works quite well except that SkyDrive apparently doesn't allow automated synchronization. I'm not sure if this is a SkyDrive problem in general or an issue with the way FolderSync handles uploads, but I'll look into it more.

In case, you know, there's more than just me wanting to do this specific thing.

MannishBoy wrote:
Secret Asian Man wrote:

I just upgraded to 4.3 on my N4. Unfortunately this means I have to use hangouts vs talk. Which means I can't tell if someone is active or away anymore.

Anybody have a good IM client to replace hangouts?

I've seen talk on XDA about uninstalling Hangouts and reinstalling the Voice apk.

My phone isn't rooted, I'm not sure I could do that. I'll poke around XDA more but I haven't seen a good thread for it.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I'm switching from a Windows Phone to an Android phone (Nexus 4), and the only feature I've really missed are the automatic backups of my pictures to SkyDrive. I can use the SkyDrive app to upload my pictures manually, but I'd rather have an automated option.

With thanks to Edwin, I think I found it. Cloudii is a cloud storage management app with some nice synchronization features. It has a pre-configured option for camera sync, but I had to setup a few manual syncs for folders other than the main camera folder (screenshots, downloads, etc.) Still, it's working nicely so far and might be a solution to my problem.