Android Apps - What I Use

I've been asked by a few people for recommendations of Android applications that I use.  I've made a few lists, but this one is the most comprehensive of those lists.  Most links below go to Androlib which have QR codes for you to scan with your phone.

• Advanced Task Manager (free) - Great for killing hanging processes and keeping yourself from needing to reset the phone.
• Astro File Manager (free) - because everyone needs a file manager
• BookmarkBR (free) - Backup utility for your browser bookmarks.
• CalWidget (free) - Quick at a glance widget for home screen.
• Documents To Go Full ($29.99 $14.99 for a limited time) - Kinda spendy, but great if you need to open/edit docs or spreadsheets or view pdfs on your phone.  I've done a few homework assignments in a pinch with this, very handy to have.
• Draw! (free) - Great drawing app to entertain kids with.
• Foursquare (free) - Great app for checking in and letting the world know where you are, much, much better than their mobile website.  You can view offers and other foursquare specific things within the app.
• FxCamera (free) - My wife loves this because she can make "polaroid" pictures with it.
• GDocs (free) - Great if you need offline access to your google docs. Allows editing of Google Docs and quick access to Google Spreadsheets.
• Google Voice (free) - Great app for checking your Google Voice messages.  Its also great that it can take over your phone and make calls as your Google Voice number.
• GPS Status (free) - Get better information from the GPS radio, compass included.
• Live Bookmarks (free) - A great desktop widget for quick access to all of your browser bookmarks.
• Reveal Reader (free) - A simple scripture reader for for those interested in the LDS Standard Works, and other church-related publications including hymns.  Support for bookmarking and in-app downloads, so you don't have to go hunting for the files yourself.
• Ringdroid (free) - customize mp3 on your phone and make them into ringtones 
• Seesmic (free) - Great for twittering, nice big compose screen, integration with the share menu and it doesn't have a huge footprint.  Twitter updates come in pretty reliably, yfrog/twitpic/etc image preview saves time.
• Shazam (free) - Good for identifying songs on the radio or elsewhere.
• Skydeck (free) - Great if you want to keep a backup of your messages and calls on the web, check out their check out their site.  Their app also has a caller id function that identifies calls from people not in your contacts.
• TextEdit (free) - Small little application lets you jot down notes, w/o internet access.
• Voice Recorder (free) - Record audio and email it.
• Yelp (free) - Great for finding a place to eat.

Other apps that I've had installed but deleted due to space limitations on the G1: Google Sky Map, Twidroid Pro, Google Goggles, Layar, Evernote, Brightkite, Steel, Locale, Pandora, and Last.fm.  Most were great, but I didn't use them often enough to warrant using the space to keep them.

Let me know in the comments if there are some alternate apps that I should take a look at.

My First Chrome Extension - My Shortcuts

I threw together a Chrome extension a while back when extensions were only in the development build of Chrome.  Since then I've changed my extension quite a bit, and it now has around 4,000 weekly users.  

When I first put the extension together, it was a toolstrip on the bottom of the Chrome window.  These have since been removed in favor of BrowserActions, which are single buttons on the Chrome UI.

v. 1.0 - 1.2

I thought the toolstrip worked pretty well, but you can see how my extension would get out of hand with more than a few links.  I made the switch to using the BrowserActions, this was relatively simple, I just changed the layout to vertical.

v. 1.3

I've been making incremental changes over the last few week or so, to both speed it up and add features.  The most recent release v.2.0.3 includes a new feature that allows users to create their own links to go along with the included Google links.

v 2.1

The entire project was written with InType, which is an awesome Notepad replacement with tabs and syntax highlighting.  It works very well for javascript/css/html editing, though debugging must be done within Chrome.  Highly recommend this as a replacement for a quick text editor.


In making these changes I've tried to optimize the extension to make it as small and fast as possible.  I used Google Closure tools to minify the javascript with their Closure Compiler.  In order to do this I pulled all of my js code out of the popup and options pages and put them in their own script files.  The minification of my js files saved me a few kilobytes of space.

I was able to compress the stylesheet using CSSDrive's CSS Compressor, which only saved a few bytes, but helps nonetheless.

I ran all of my images through PunyPNG, which shrunk the overall image footprint, even though only half of my images saw any change.

I'll continue making changes and listening to the feedback from users and hopefully keep it current and usable.  Thanks for the support.


Get it here: http://bit.ly/MyShortcutsChrome

Introduction to Web Development

So, I'm taking a class that requires me to create a blogger account, which I have, as of a few years ago, and to post about said assignment.  Here it is.

Chrome Extension Sneak Peek

Look for another blog post in the next few days about my updated chrome extension and the enhancements being made.  Sneak peek: