Postcards From My Life

Dear Reader,

I am now in my sixth month of owning a Moto Droid (her name is Karen) an so I thought I would share with you which apps I use the most. Feel free to append your favorite apps to the list. It does need to be said that these are not necessarily my favorite apps, just the ones I use the most.

1. Email
   The default mail client that comes with Android is good enough to do everything I want it to.
2. Seesmic
   As told someone this morning I use Seesmic on my Droid because it hasn’t pissed me off…yet. Honestly, I use it because I use Seesmic on my desktop. There are things I don’t like about ti but overall it is good and it is reliable.
3. Google Maps
   While it is not the app I use the most, Google Maps is one of the reasons to own a droid in my opinion. Sometimes I know where I am going, most of the time I don’t. In town, it is great to be able to just type the name of a business and get turn-by-turn navigation form where I am to where I am going. It is as good as any stand-alone GPS device I have used and I can check in with FourSquare when I get done. (not in the app, but with the device)
4. Foursquare
   Those of you who follow me on twitter (@calevans) are rolling your eyes right now because you are sick of seeing my checkins. (I know you are, you’ve told me.) I like FourSquare. I am not sure why. I try not to abuse it and even turned it off while vacationing in Savannah so I didn’t bore everyone with my sightseeing and pub crawls. :) Still, this is one of my favorite apps on my droid AND one of the most used.
5. Skype
   At Blue Parabola we use Skype a lot. Having this running in the background on my phone means I an never totally out of touch unless I want to be. I wish Skype would not have agreed to let Verizon dictate it’s terms of use to me. Other than that, it’s a good app and does not appreciably lower my battery life.
6. Google Listen
   It’s not a great podcatcher but it’ll do in a pinch. I wish it would let me put in a URL of a podcast and have it find it and show me which episodes I could listen to. If it would allow me to subscribe a-la iTunes, I would switch all my podcasts over to my phone and leave my iTouch for music only.
7. WiFi Finder
   This is a handy app to have when on hte road or in any strange environment. I don’t use it often but when I do it is great.
8. Car Locator
   By purchasing this app, I have now purchased more apps for my droid than I ever did for my iTouch. (exactly 1 at the moment) This is a great app for travelers who leave their car at airports, shoppers who leave their cars in big parking lots or pirates who bury treasure and don’t want to draw up a map. Other than the one time it tried to convince me that I was in Nashville but my car was in Buffalo, NY, it has worked great.
9. iOthello
   This is the only game I actually play on my droid. Sorry, the screen is just too small (or my fingers too fat) to play games comfortably. This one I like though.
10. Barcode Scanner
    I like playing with things like QRCodes. When I was working on a Flex project to generate them, this was the app I used for testing. It and the camera on my droid are good enough to read the barcode off the picture of the back of my business card.

That’s it. As I indicated, some of them are not my favorite apps but just the most convenient. Also, looking at this list now I see that while I do use my droid for a variety of tasks, communication is still the #1 thing I do with it. it should be noted that I rarely use the phone app. :)

Until Next Time,
I <3 |<
=C=

Tags: android, moto droid, motorola

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 11:57 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.Both comments and pings are currently closed.