Shared by Kristopher
android apps, android, nexus one

The Android Market may still lag behind the iPhone App Store in terms of variety and quality, but there is something to be said for the Android operating system's extremely tight integration with existing Google products, and the wide choice of devices and carriers.

There's no question that the iPhone has many wonderful apps, but Android's smart syncing with existing tools, interesting Android-only experiments coming every day from Google employees, and its open marketplace model have yielded some tools that may give the average iPhone user pause.

If you're looking for a change, or you're in the smartphone market and still weighing the pros and cons, consider these Android-only apps and how they might fit into your work, play, and mobile lifestyle.

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1. OpenHome

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There's no denying that the iPhone OS is a gorgeous piece software. But when it comes to the home screen, you get what you get, and you don't get upset, to quote a nursery school mantra.

Android is completely open-source, which means that apps can change the functionality and appearance of the OS, if you permit them to. This isn't always good for safety, but it's great for customization.

OpenHome is one of the leading customization apps available on the Market. It functions as a replacement for the default home screen, into which you can load customs skins, icon packs, and fonts many of which are freely available in the Market and created by other users.

In addition to the look and feel of your OS, OpenHome also allows for other custom tweaks including soft keyboard improvements and widget modifications.

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2. Google Voice

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Imagine a world where you never have to listen to another voicemail again. That's almost what you get when you set up Google Voice and utilize the Android app. Google Voice lets you keep your existing mobile number, but will forward your missed calls to a generated Google number that you can check on the web, in your e-mail, or via the app.

The service automatically generates voicemail transcription that is usually accurate enough to get the gist of what the caller is saying. Instead of getting a voicemail on your phone, you'll receive and e-mail (or text message) with the transcription.

The app then lets you scroll through your messages visually, like an e-mail inbox, and stream the audio messages from the web as needed, all without wasting precious mobile minutes.

There are certainly other great voicemail alternatives for the iPhone (and Voice is available as a web-based service), but Google Voice's deep integration with Gmail (you can also enable audio playback within web e-mail messages) makes it a great compliment to your hand-held arsenal of communications tools.

Google Voice is still an invite-only service at the moment. You can request an invite from Google here, or hit up your friends on social networks for one.

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3. NESoid

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Classic gamers rejoice! NESoid is a Nintendo ROM emulator for Android that actually works. The app itself is software that interprets ROM files the format of choice for hacked console games. Assuming you're loading a worthwhile ROM file from your SD card, the gameplay is really smooth.

The lite version of NESoid is free, but prevents you from loading a saved-state of a game. The full version will cost you $3.49 and unlocks this feature.

Most ROMS are not exactly kosher in terms of copyright, so we'll leave it at your discretion whether you want to actually track down the games. This is likely why console emulators have not made it through the stringent App Store approval process, but are now appearing in Android's more liberal Market.

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4. Google Finance

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If you've got an eye on your stock portfolio 24/7, Google Finance can be a useful tool for getting customized, real-time quotes.

The Android app syncs directly to your Google Finance portfolios and streams live data right into your hands by way of quote updates, charts, and financial news.

Android is currently the only mobile platform with an official Google Finance app.

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5. Google Listen

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Google Listen is a unique offering from Google Labs that functions like a search engine and subscription tool for podcasts across the web. If you're on the train and realize you've forgotten to download the latest episode of NPR's This American Life, simply fire up Google Listen, search for it, and stream it immediately, from the source.

Google Listen effectively eliminates the need to download podcasts or connect your handset to your computer. And with subscription options built in, once you find a show you like, you'll never miss an episode while you're on the go.

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6. Gmail and Google Calendar

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Last but not least, the utility of the fully integrated Gmail and Calendar apps that come built-in to the Android OS cannot be overstated. One of the core reasons why any Gmail or Google Apps user should go Android is that the handset will complete your suite of cloud computing productivity tools.

Because of the intrinsic link between your Android phone and your Google account, the mobile functionality of Google apps like Gmail and Calendar are seamless. Draft an e-mail on your phone and it is instantly viewable in your drafts folder on the web. Update an appointment on the web Calendar, and it's reflected on your phone seconds later.

Android users also enjoy the built-in functionality of shared calendars, Gmail labels, threaded conversations, and Send As accounts if it is configured in your settings.

If you live and work out of your Gmail inbox, an Android handset is the perfect extension.

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More Android resources from Mashable:

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- 7 Mind-Blowing Free Android Apps
- Free Multiplayer Android Games [3 of the Best]
- 3 News Apps for Android Compared
- The Best Free Twitter Apps for Android
- 30 Android Apps to Watch
- 8 Android Apps Worth Paying For (And Some That Aren't)

The Wall Street Journal reports that more changes are planned for Buzz in response to user feedback, including the option to block conversations and other filtering features.

Even as Buzz impressed some social media enthusiasts, it also angered some folks for various reasons the most significant being that it's a bit noisy and difficult to sort through, and that it isn't quite as privacy-friendly as everyone would have preferred.

The WSJ says Google assembled important company figures into a war room where they discussed ways to respond to user criticism. The first results were the big privacy tweaks that went live over the weekend an end to Reader and Picasa connectivity and Gmail contact auto-following. They also made it possible for users who aren't interested at all to remove the Buzz from Gmail completely.

Details about the coming improvements to filtering haven't been revealed beyond the option to block certain conversations, but we're guessing or at least hoping that the ability to collapse comment threads will be among the coming changes. That was by far the most requested feature when we pinged the Buzz crowd asking what features everyone would like to see.

There are a lot of improvements yet to be made. For example, unless you abandon the option of a vanity URL in favor of a numeric homepage, it's pretty easy for someone to guess your e-mail address. If you want it to stay private, that could be a problem.

We'll see what Google does in the coming weeks; we were expecting a large number of new tweaks and this update confirms that they're coming.

Tags: buzz, Google, google buzz, News, social media

Google's two new announcements: integrating a Twitter-like service into Gmail and a goal of a real-time speech translation service shows what direction they're taking the company: Into the space between you and every other human being on the planet.

To be fair, these two developments are really far apart in their delivery dates. The Gmail status update could come as soon as tomorrow, whereas the the speech-to-text-to-speech translation system is still a ways out. You can definitely see just how much work Google needs to do by trying to read your Google Voice voicemail transcriptions. (Voice search works better on Android 2.1 because you're talking slower and enunciating.) But both these features point in the same direction many of the company's other products have been hinting at. Here's a list of Google's major products, in case you forgot, and which sector of communication they want to dominate.

Google Voice: This is a big one, and it'll be the most natural interface for Google to slot in the voice-translation into. If you're using it the way Google wants you to use it, you're already piping all your voice calls and SMS through Google's tubes. And refining speech to text gives them a good idea of your interests and what you're talking about, allowing them to better serve up the relevant ads to you during calls.

Gmail: Having access to at least one end of everyone's email conversations, outside of business emails, gives Google the ability to be a gateway for most of your written communications. But that's not enough for Google, which is why they developed...

Google Wave: It's email, message boards, chat rooms and collaboration software all in one, except every participant needs a Google account. This closes that "openness" loophole that email has, and forces everyone into Google's biosphere. So this, and Gmail, should make sure that every medium-length communique passes through Google's maw for analysis. But what about shorter and longer forms? Update: Thanks commenters, for reminding me that Google made Wave open, so people can create their own Wave servers to talk to each other with the Wave protocol. The point still remains, that if you were going to use a service, wouldn't you rather use the service from the company that created the protocol, for performance and feature reasons?

Google Docs: For longer documents.

Google Talk: For short blasts of instant messaging, video chats and some audio chatting.

Picasa and YouTube: Communication doesn't have to be all text-based, you putting your photos and videos online count too.

Android and Chrome OS: By getting you down at the operating system level, Google can theoretically know every kind of communication you perform. It knows who you talk to, how you do it and when you do it. It can even shape the how by delivering the experience themselves.

Everything else. There's Checkout, Finance, Maps, Reader, News and other apps, which fill in the other forms of communication or expression that aren't quite covered by the major products above. One major missing piece is social networking, where Google basically failed before with its Orkut service (except for Brazil), so this new Twitter/Gmail hybrid might be their next entrance into the space.

But why do they want these things? Why would Google want to be the middleman between you and the world? To sell you ads, of course. And don't think Google is going to stop at just helping you talk over the internet or over the phone, they're going to reach into meatspace as well. How? One step is making that speech-to-speech translation portable, so you can do a sort of near-field communication with someone else with the same device while at the same time being able to look them in the face. Then, blast you two with the appropriate ads on the billboard next to you.

Gmail users will soon have more ways to keep up with their friends via a widget that shows quick status updates like Facebook and Twitter do, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The move would further turn Gmail, which revolutionized online e-mail, into a comprehensive communications hub. The intent is to keep people's attention centered on Google, by making Gmail, not Facebook, people's first stop online and their default place to send and receive messages. Gmail users can already chat via Jabber or AIM, make video calls, and send SMS messages from Gmail's web interface.

As the Post reports:

Google has been trying to fashion Gmail into more than an e-mail service for years. The service currently lets users set an away message, which can be a link to a Web page, that their friends see when they instant-message them. Now, it plans to launch a new interface that will aggregate updates from more friends in a stream.

The new stream will also eventually include content that a user's connections share through its YouTube video site and Picasa photo service, according to one person familiar with the matter. But whether those features will also be announced in the coming days remains unclear.

The full extent of the new features remain unclear, but Google is inviting reporters to a launch event Tuesday on its Mountain View, California, campus promising some innovations in two of our most popular products, according to an e-mail sent to reporters.

Yahoo has included similar features in its e-mail service, letting users see what photos their contacts have uploaded to Flickr, for example.

Google could integrate updates from a user's Twitter account, since most of that is public. And it could likely make it easy for Gmail users to post to Twitter as well, due to Twitter's liberal API policy.

Facebook, however, will not likely let its rival re-publish status updates, or allow users to publish to their Facebook pages through Gmail. Facebook, much like AOL and Compuserve back in the early '90s, is a controlled and sanitized version of the larger internet, but it relies on closed protocols.

via Google to Add Social Feature to Gmail - WSJ.com.

See Also:

• April 1, 2004: Gmail Hits Webmail G-Spot
• Google Turns on Gmail Encryption to Protect Wi-Fi Users
• Gmail's New 'Undo Send' Feature Saves You From Outbox Regret
• AOL Announces Lifestream App for Twitter, Facebook, SMS
• Walled Garden No More, AOL Adds Social Networks to Homepage

Shared by Kristopher
max klein

I use google wave every single day. I start off the day by checking gmail. Then I look at a few news sites to see if anything of interest happened. Then I open google wave: because that's where my business lives. That's how I run a complicated network of collaborators, make hundreds of decisions every day and organise the various sites that made me $14.000 in december.

It was not always like this. There was a time just a few months ago when I did not have google wave. I think of that time with horror - because that epoch was marked with conflicts, total chaos, money was being lost every day, fights were happening between me and my collaborators. Google wave came in, and within a couple of weeks, a heavenly peace had descended on my business.

But let me start from the beginning. I am involved in about five different web based businesses. Niche sites, iPhone apps (simple ones), developer tools, downloadable desktop software and a subscription based web service. They all have varying degrees of success, but all bring in some income every month (well, apart from the web service one). Each business has a different set of collaborators (people who work with me on them, partners, employees, freelancers). Each business requires quite a lot of management, because they all are made up of a lot of individual software that have an update cycle, reaction to new releases, customer email answering and so on.

Before google wave, I was in a period I like to refer to as the age of chaos and anger. This was when I collaborated by email. When something needed to be done, I would send out an email. When I discovered something new I would send out an email. After two months, one of my freelancers replied my email with a screenshot. It showed his inbox, and there were about 50 unread emails from me, 10 of which where various threats about why he was not replying my emails. We would use skype messaging to communicate and skype conferences every two days, in addition to the emails.

At the time, we would also send designs and screenshots by email - needless to say, things would get lost - hardly anything would get done on time, and the most common reply I would get back is that they missed the particular instruction in the mass of emails I would send.

To compound my trouble, we were collaborating across multiple time zones - UK, US Pacific Time, Indian time and Singapore time. Emails would arrive in the night and it is depressing to wake up to 35 new emails from different people.

Then I got my google wave invite. First of all, I didn't really get it. I was not really sure how this would help me. However, after I had a skype conference and one of my partners complained for 15 minutes about how I would write unimportant emails like

"I need a status update next week"

I decided to try something new. All emails that were NOT time critical would be done with google wave, and all important emails could be written normally. We started off doing that.

Things changed.

Suddenly, communication habits of everyone changed. People started grouping their communication into topics and resurrecting old 'waves' when it was about the same topic. For example, if we were talking about bonuses, and then spoke about something else for two weeks, then came back to bonuses, we would simply resurrect the old wave. Business became structured.

Then something unexpected and suprising emerged. Google Wave took over from skype chat. Previously, we had been using instant messenger to communicate things quickly, but the problem was that because of our time zone differences, we would have 3 out of 4 people usually on. So one person would totally miss the entire conversation. But with google wave, we could hold long discussions as a chat, then when the other people woke up, they could contribute.

Another suprising effect was that chats became slower and more thoughtful. Because google wave functions both as email and as chat, it is not unusual to wait 5 minutes to get an answer to something you wrote. On skype, this would not happen. This slowness is very beneficial, because it makes the answers more permanent (like an email) and not so hurried (like an IM).

And Google Wave is even great for massive fights. The indentations and the ability to review what you said in the past means that you can go back and answer to an accusation. It's like a WWF cage rumble for fights, multiple people can rage on about different topics at the same time. But the thing with it is that because the fights can last for days, they slow down, and then people are no longer angry and solutions start to appear. Contrast this with IM fights, where one person shuts his messenger and that may be the end of your partnership.

What has Google Wave done for me?

* My stress level is way lower
* Conversations are now organised in topics, and no longer flat
* Fights have become more constructive
* Working across multiple time zones is no longer a problem
* I can share screenshots, design documents with multiple and different people with ease
* I have a single control panel to manage all my conversation with everyone I am working with
* Before Google Wave, I felt like I was working very much and getting very little done. After google wave, I feel I am doing little work, but I am making more and more money every month
* I feel in control of my business - with my iPhone I can access the heart of my business anytime and anywhere

What's missing from Google Wave?

* You cannot manage your contacts or create contact groups. It's easy to add people to waves that you don't want in there.

But in general, if you are collaborating with people and you have not tried Google Wave, then you are perhaps missing the greatest thing to happen to small web based businesses since Dropbox.

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

The question really is what happens when there are no longer applications that allow us to take web content with us on the go?

The promise of RSS was in the ability host applications to store web content for offline or time-shifted consumption. This played out well in the early days as developers that embraced the specifications of RSS wrote programs that allowed subscription to feeds, stored content locally on a device, allowed the creation of folders and keyword driven categories for grouping.

What hasn't played out very well is the success of these RSS programs called readers. For some time now they have languished as one competitor slowly took their users away. Many times because they stopped innovating on top of the RSS spec and treated solely as an update mechanism. Which it is but then relegated it to interfaces reminiscent of web mail applications. Who needs more web mail apps?

That isn't to say that the competitor of which I speak and reference in the title has an application is that much better. It operates likes its sister service, Gmail. Now with the lions share of RSS consumers using it to consume feeds it is putting the competitors out of business or forcing them into niches to seek out revenue.

NewsGator is the perfect example of this with over five rounds of funding under its belt, two client-side programs for reading feeds and a defunct online reader. Their new products boast integration with Google Reader.

If no one can beat Google in this area and the biggest players in the space are moving on to other feed related products, what is to become of time-shifted consumption?

It is not hard for me to envision an internet with only Google Reader as the sole RSS aggregator for consumers. But what comes as an easier vision is Google rolling it into a Wave like application to focus on the real-time aspects of pinging and conversations.

The next great opportunity for RSS and time-shifted culture will begin again when Google does this type of integration and gives up on the feed reader. RSS is the plumbing that keeps content moving around the internet but as soon as Google puts it away as machine language, the humans can pick it up again build applications with a better experience.

Marc Andreessen has said that Web 2.0 was just the web looking like itself. The next versions of feed readers will be feeds looking like themselves.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

What Happens When There Is Only One Feed Reader? is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

Update: Threadsy is offering Tech Startups readers access to the private beta get your access on! Thanks @dskendall.

The story here really is theory vs. utility. Wave is a tool that comes from a part of Google dedicated to R&D and future earnings, Google Labs.

Threadsy comes from a startup with an agenda like making money in the short term with its software.

Both applications are ambitious in trying to solve a couple of problems at once.

Centralize tools that we use to communicate

Online communication tools are decentralized because most of them are products of individual need. They are solutions to problems that certain users were having with other ways of communicating. It wasn't a lack of vision that caused this. It was market demand. The same demand that is making it necessary to begin to centralize these tools.

Twitter, Facebook and email are the dominant players right now. Sure I know email isn't really a player but it is a mode of communication that is decentralized. It is really a collective of the GMail, HotMail and Yahoo!

This new aggregation of the communication modes makes it easier for end users to locate conversations and friends across networks. Think of it as that nebulous space between AT&T and Verizon where there networks connect. The difference in this case is that Wave and Threadsy are destinations where these connections are made.

Organizing the diaspora of personal brand

Users of the social media tools that are integrated into Wave and Threadsy have worked countless hours building a brands on varying sites. By combining the communication mechanisms they essentially combine a users online brand by centralizing a the users identity.

A users communication styles do vary based on the tool they are using but when centralized into one application it forces users to organize their collective into a single brand. It is a necessity of using the tool, Wave or Threadsy.

At this stage of Google Wave vs. Threadsy, I'm placing my bet on Threadsy to produce a tool that quicker than Google that will meet market need simply based on utility.

Google has a long way to go with the theory of Wave, especially on the front-end if they choose to compete in this space. I would assume that they will continue down a path to make Wave the platform that powers other real-time applications like Pulse from Novell.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Google Wave vs. Threadsy is a post from: TechStartups.com

Shared by Schlomo
Word. Chesspark/Collecta has known this for a long time.

Web surfers nowadays use many browsers on different machines, even on small devices like smartphones. They obviously need a way to gather together all these sparse data (like bookmarks, passwords, history, etc.) and make them available from any browser at any time.

Two of the largest internet players today provide two different approaches, both at the same experimental state:

• Mozilla with Weave, a product from its labs, providing a Firefox extension, a opensource server implementation, and a documented protocol
• Google will offer a Chrome feature, Google Talk server, Google account, and maybe a documented protocol, since the code is opensource

It is possible to provide browser data sync client as a cross-browser extension or plugin, a server component which would rely on an existing XMPP server and account of your choice, and a protocol which could well be Bookmarks, Message Archiving, or Persistent Storage of Public and Private Data via PubSub.

This shows the ongoing effort of Google to use XMPP: Talk and Jingle, GMail notifications, Wave, and now data sync.

With Google and Apple using XMPP for its notifications service, XMPP shows itself as a strong infrastructure for a wide array of applications beyond the simple chat.

Windows/Mac/Linux: Mozilla has just released a new beta version of their desktop email application in the form of Thunderbird 3 Beta 3, adding better Gmail integration, smart folders, and more.

The update promises several improvements beyond what we saw when Mozilla released Thunderbird 3 Beta 2, both for developers and users. Specifically:

• Tabbed Email Messages

  Double-clicking or hitting enter on a mail message will now open that message in a New Tab window. Middle-clicking on messages or folders will open them in a Tab in the background. When quitting Thunderbird, visible tabs will be saved and will be restored when you open Thunderbird the next time. There is also a new Tab menu on the Tab toolbar to help you switch between Tabs.

• New Message Summary View

  Selecting multiple messages will give you a summary view of the emails you have selected.

• Column Headings

  The column headings that are displayed and the order in which they are displayed can now be set on a per-folder basis.

• Smart Folders

  The folder pane offers a Smart Folders mode which combines special mailboxes (e.g. Inbox) from multiple accounts together.

• Improved Gmail Integration

  Better recognition and integration of Gmail's special folders such as Sent and Trash including non-English versions of Gmail. Thunderbird also uses All Mail as the Archives folder.

For more, check out the release notes. Before you upgrade, you may also want to take a look at the known issues to make sure that a little beta bugginess doesn't disrupt your email flow.

Thunderbird is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. If you're a Thunderbird die-hard and you've tried out the Thunderbird 3 betas, let's hear how it's been working for you in the comments.

As a writer covering the tech industry, there are a couple of websites and services that I would classify as downright essential for my job, including some VoIP/IM communication tools and my e-mail application of choice (Gmail).

Apart from those, I consider an RSS reader to be such a vital tool for me as well, both on a private as a professional level. As I wrote before, I quickly fell in love with Streamy for that particular aspect of sifting through mountains of information on a daily basis, partly because it allows me to both track blogs and news sites I subscribe to and keep track of what Twitter and the people I follow on there as well as on Facebook and FriendFeed are buzzing about.

Add to that Techmeme, which has an algorithm in place designed to weed out the best and/or most talked about news stories related to the tech industry out there, and you can tell I have a pretty solid set of tools readily available that enable me to keep tabs on what I want and need to be tracking closely. Techfuga was another one, but it recently ground to a halt.

New to the arsenal of tools at my disposal free of charge is Tech Investor News, which despite its not-so-sexy name is exactly what it sounds like: a news site that investors in tech companies - plus industry pundits and reporters - should be made aware of. Glad to be of service.

TIN complements the websites and services described above perfectly, and competes with neither one of them. If anything, it saves me a lot of time and rids me of the pain of going to Google News / Blogsearch all the time to learn what the most recent stories in tech or centered around a company in particular are.

What I like about it? The big fat stock quote in the upper corner, the fact that you can filter down to 20 of the most discussed tech companies (note the Google Investor News screenshot below), the decent search function and the speed with which it updates news feeds (every 5 minutes or so, with some human editing involved). But what I also like is the fact that you can narrow your news consumption down to a specific set of categories which makes it very easy to find specific information (for instance, you can opt to display only stories about Steve Jobs' or Rumors' when browsing for news on Apple).

TIN is a project bootstrapped by a self-described media nut' / investor called Frank Cioffi, who spent decades working in such media as radio and television and turned to the internet after many years of consulting and trading stocks. Cioffi got the idea for Tech Investor News to scratch his own itch, and that's always a good way to start something that other people - like me - could also find interesting.

Bookmarked!

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