I was looking at trying an alternate launcher for my phone. At first, I took at a look at Launcher Pro, but it requires more permissions than I am comfortable granting for an application launcher. For example, it requests permission for read and write access to my email. I am sure that this is required for a Gmail widget, but since I wouldn’t use this widget, and Launcher Pro also has network access, there is a potential for my data to leave the phone.
Instead, it looks like ADW.Launcher does everything that I want in a launcher, without requesting too many permissions. It also has some interesting features:
Support for themes
Customizable dock bar and application drawer
Support for different sizes for widgets
The main thing I like about it is that it doesn’ t request too many permissions, so there is less of a security concern.
A while ago, I wrote about On My Way. This application allowed you to share your location, and that person could see this location updated in real-time. That application is not available anymore.
Glympse is a new free application that allows you to do the same thing, but it has some interesting features:
Ability to set a time limit, where sharing of your location is automatically stopped.
Ability to mark recipients as “favorites”, to make it easier to initiate sharing
Ability to set a destination, where sharing will automatically be stopped when you reach that location.
DoggCatcher is a very good podcast application for Android. DoggCatcher supports audio and video feeds, as well as limited support for rss items that don’t have enclosures. There are some features that make DoggCatcher a pretty good podcast application:
You can browse several directories of podcasts, from with the application.
Search for feeds
Configure fetch and deletion settings globally, or for each feed.
Configure download options to conserve battery usage.
The one feature that I would like to see added is to have queue of file that is manually managed. I would like to be able to manually add content to a list, and be able to manage the playback order.
android2cloud is a project similar to Chrome to Phone, but instead of sending links to your phone, instead you send urls from your phone to the browser on your computer.
I am not sure how often I will use it, as majority of the time that I am looking at the browser on my phone, I am not at my computer, and am most likely not logged in. Ideally, the shared links would be queued, and the pages would open the next time that the browser is opened, but it looks like that doesn’t happen.
Chrome to Phone is a pretty cool project. With this Chrome extension and Android applicaiton, you can send links to web pages to your phone. I use this for:
Sending a location from Google Maps to your phone, where you can easily get start navigating to the destination
Sending web page url to the phone, where it can be viewed
Sirius/XM has released an Android application which allows you to listen to the satellite radio stations on your phone. Once I downloaded the application, I was able to play all of the Sirius/XM station, over wifi and 3G.
Unfortunately, they decided not to put the application in the Android Market, but you have to download it manually. This will mean that updates to the application will not be automatically shown to the user, when they become available. Also, if you have to restore your phone, this application will not be automatically reinstalled.
The other problem that I have had with the application is that when the application loses the connection, it plays the data in the buffer, and continues to loop that audio.
I will probably pay for the premium streaming, once the free trial ends, as I like listening to this content at work.
On My Way is an pretty cool Android application. When you are going somewhere, and someone is expecting you, you can use On My Way.
When you launch On My Way, you can start sharing. When you do that the application generates a url that you can share with people who are expecting you. If they access that url, they will see an embedded map that shows your current location.
It would be very cool if you could also specify your destination in the app, so then the web page could also show your ETA.
A while ago, My Movies came out with an iPhone application that lets you sync the meta data of your movie collection to your phone. This lets you see which movies that you own while you are out, so you can know whether you should rent or buy a movie. This synchronization happens by the PC application syncing the collection to the My Movies online collection, and then your phone syncs from there.
They just released an Android application that has the same functionality. This is yet another benefit of using My Movies to manage my movie collection.
I have been having a problem receiving my voicemail on my iPhone. My wife would leave message on my cell phone, but my phone would show no indication of a waiting voice mail message. Also when I call in to get my voicemail, nothing appears their either. I think that this is a problem with AT&T and not my iPhone.
Google made it available to use Google Voice with existing cell phones. With this you can now have your voicemail sent to Google voice, and you can listen to it from your phone or your computer. Also Google Voice will create a transcript of your message, and you can received that via email or sms.
I have been using Google Voice for a little bit, but this functionality allows me to receive messages from callers that don’t know my Google Voice number in my Google Voice inbox.
Paul's Time Sink 