I love Android, almost as much as my co-Authors love their Apple’s and iOS’s but unless you have a phone or a tablet which is running pure, unadulterated Android then you aren’t getting the full experience but rather a heavily watered down version, just look at how dire the Android tablet market is.
Not that this blog seems to be primarily leaning towards mobile apps (not intentional) but there is no doubt that some of the more successful apps out there take their lead from the simplistic but addictive nature of years gone by. But some of the top apps out there are direct ports of actual games from the mists of time. So here are the top retro games that I’ve parted with actual cash for to re-live those glory days.
It’s hard to take in the images that are coming out of Japan this week and the to contemplate the enormity of the tragedy that has happened there. It’s obvious that so much help is needed and there are so many ways in which you can do you bit.
One way is just by using your phone. Not by calling a pledge number but by downloading apps. A large number of developers are slashing the prices of their apps and are donating a large chunk of the money, sometimes all to help the relief effort.
So with this we bring you a run down of the apps that you can get to help.
I’m sure you’ve heard by now but the iPad 2 is on its way! Announced on Wednesday it’s got us geek all stirred up. Even Steve Jobs took a break from sick leave to tell us the good news.
So is it any good? Well of course it is (opinion of a self-confessed fanboy) considering I’ve loved the original so much over the last year, if they’d covered it in rainbows and called it Jeremy I’d have bought the new one.
The Nexus One (HTC Passion) was/is Google’s first outing into the Smartphone market and, being Google runs the Android Operating System in all it’s unadulterated glory and man! What a phone it is.
The beauty of the N1 is that as it is Google’s flagship phone, pre-dating the recently released Samsung Galaxy S, it gets all the latest and greatest Android updates. So where the likes of the Desire, Motorola Defy and the like are 2 (or in the Defy’s case 6) months behind the latest incarnation of Android the N1 gets them first. However at the time of writing it was still waiting to get the latest 2.3 Gingerbread OS which is only available in the Galaxy S, so for now you’ll need to stick to 2.2 Froyo.
The phone itself feels incredible. When you look at the aluminium finished casing of the iPhone 4, it looks too clean and clinical. The phone appears in two pieces, a soft-to-the-touch solid rubberised feel which does not in the least feel tacky and an almost metallic/aluminium finish wrapping around the rest of the phone. The two tone hues between light grey and dark looks great but it boils down to personal taste.
The screen is set to a very sweet 3.7 capacitive touch screen, exactly like the HTC Desire and feels so more reactive than the iPhone. But this could be down to the 1Ghz Snapdragon processor and the 512Mb of RAM which isn’t being bloated by the Apple OS as it is running Linux which, in my opinion, has almost always been the most responsive OS I’ve used.
There is a trackball situated underneath the touch sensitive buttons which glows when you receive a message, E-mail or push notification from your services; as well as alerting you, it can also be used to navigate menus in all directions as well selecting items (especially on web pages that are not mobile optimised).
Now I’m not going to be going into the microscopic detail of the phones hardware because that information is already well documented on the web but as mentioned you are not forced to use the underlying Android OS by using the pre-installed skins that you get on the Desire (Sense) or the Defy (Motoblur). This means that if you are a developer (and to an extent I am on Java) you have unrestricted access to all of the phones features and because of that the N1 really is a Development phone.
That doesn’t mean to say that the average person in the street can’t use it, of course they can, but to get the full benefit from everything it offers you really should be involved with or be willing to try your hand at developting apps for it. It even includes an unlocked Bootloader so if you wanted to install your own flavour of the Android OS like CyanogenMod you are free to do so. How many hardware vendors do you know that gives you the features to do this?
However, there is one fundamental flaw to the phone which hampered my usage of the N1 and as a result I am biased against getting it. The WiFi has been documented as being temperamental at best, sometimes it connects, sometimes it doesn’t. Other times it will connect but will not send/receive data (this happened to me three times on two different handsets), if like me you want to use the internet on a smartphone you don’t want to be using the 3G when your WiFi is available. By all accounts Google have fixed the issue but have yet to role the update out, which until it is released, you have a very expensive coaster sitting in front of you.
If they fix it, get the phone you won’t regret it. Until then avoid it, but it is one hell of a phone.
It’s been a great year to be an iPad owner and I’m loving the community around me that’s seeing that this is the future of how to consume the web. In the last few weeks I have been downloading and testing the latest apps, and if you’re an owner of the ‘holy grail’ of computing then this is what to download, and heck why not they’re all free!
VLC Player
Now this beauty has gotten me out of a lot of tight spots for both myself and my users when it comes to playing weird and wonderful video formats. Well now it’s come to the iPad and man did this platform need it! Simply download for free, enable it in iTunes and you can watch all those downloaded vids on demand. A true revolution.
iGizmo
More and more publishers are working out that you can adapt for a new era and iGimzo are doing just that. A tech mag that incorporates all that the iPad has to offer along with video reports and 3D models of all the latest hardware. This is a huge step forward in publishing.
When Twitter acquired the apps formally known as Tweetie we all wondered what they could do with it and on it’s iPad release boy did they deliver. Offering above and beyond what you get from the web experience this app presents sliding panels for status updates leading to external content and the ability to seamlessly stay up to date with what’s going on this is the way that Twittermwas meant to be used.
Nightstand Central
One of the main criticisms of the iPad is that the lock screen could be used for sooo much more and although not the ideal solution Nightstand Central meets me half way. This simple little app puts the iPad into a mode that displays the time and weather as well as a choice of wallpaper. Gives you something little more interesting to look at when you’re charging,