Now that AT&T has joined the Android revolution, the first question new Android users will ask is what Android apps should I download? Luckily we've created a simple guide to get you started:

First we'll start with the operating system version of the Motorola Backflip at launch, which is version 1.5 the latest and greatest to date is 2.1 (with majority of users on 1.6). This may affect your ability to download some apps as they are compatible with higher versions of the OS. Why is the OS version so out of date? Motoblur Motorola tricked out the software for social networking ease however they have not released Motoblur on the latest and greatest Android OS. Don't fret an update is coming soon.

Now that we're over the OS hump, we'll recommend some of the best Android apps for your Motorola Backflip many for free!

ASTRO File Manager

Browse and Search files on your SD Card and phone with Astro File Manager.

Advanced Task Killer

Close individual or all apps and background services with Advanced Task Killer.

Meridian Player

Meridian Player for Music & Videos.

Dolphin Browser

Dolphin Browser allows you to browse the web using Tabs and create shortcuts using Gestures.

Handcent SMS

Handcent SMS offers text messaging like on iPhone, get T9 text capabilities and text signatures.

Shazam

Shazam... simply awesome! Get any song by simply letting your phone listen to it!

i Music Tao

i Music & i Music Tao allows you to download free MP3s.

Pandora Radio

Stream music for free with Pandora Internet Radio.

Gmote

Turn your AT&T Backflip into a media remote with Gmote and even control your computer via phone!

ShopSavvy

Scan bar codes of products in stores to find best pricing nearby or online with ShopSavvy.

Google Shopper for Android

Photo scan products to get pricing and details with Google's Shopper

Aloqa Always Be A Local

Aloqa location-based app finds places nearby you versus you searching for it.

Abduction!

Abduction! Is an additive game using your phone's accelerometer.

Robo Defense

Robo Defense is a classic tower defense game for Android phones.

Mystique. Chapter 2: The Child

Check out parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Mystique 3D horror puzzle game series.

Wixel

Like words games? Try Wuzzle for hours of fun!

Jewellust

Kill time with addictive Jewellust game

Solitaire

You can't forget a classic time-killer like Solitaire.

What the Doodle!?

Guess what others are drawing while they guess your drawing all online with What The Doodle!?

BlackJack Pro

Satisfy your Vegas crave with Blackjack Pro!

If you download all these apps you might run out of space on your Backflip! Do check these apps out and tell us what you think in the comments.

Editor's note: This a guest post written by Joff Redfern. Redfern is the co-founder of FlattenMe.com, a site for creating personalized storybooks. He was formerly a vice president of product at Yahoo, where he managed Yahoo Buzz and Toolbar.

Amazon Kindle: The Road Ahead

I'm a recent Kindle fan boy. I like the instant access to earth-friendly books, the paper-like display and the way it fits in my hand like a paperback. I've also deeply admired the crispness of the Kindle visionany book, any language, in minutes. But with Apple's iPad announcement the playing field on which the Kindle competes shifts and the disruptive technology itself gets disrupted.

If I were running the Kindle I would answer this question today: Are we innovating the publishing or the entertainment industry? Is the Kindle just for my reading entertainment or is it for watching, listening, gaming, browsing, sharing photos, and communicating with friends & family too? Ultimately the answer is shaped by consumer preference, competitors and time measured in years.

As a product guy this is a really intriguing question to try to unravelwhich path should Amazon choose? Over time this is what may push the Kindle into being more than just a reader . . .

For the same price, more is better

Will consumers prefer a multi-purpose entertainment tablet over a single-purpose reading device as their prices converge? This is a religious question; sides will be drawn. I look to the evolution of my own personal technology habits for the answer.

When I wanted to manage my contacts I started with a paper-based Address Book, upgraded to a Digital Rolodex, upgraded to a Palm V, upgraded to a Blackberry, then upgraded to an iPhone. Fundamentally I was trying to solve how I manage and communicate with my contacts. With each upgrade I got more functionality yet the price point for each device was not radically different.

If consumers can eventually get an entertainment tablet that also has the core features of a great reader (screen, content catalog, ease of purchasing) at under $200 they'll want more.

Prices drop. Over time, price won't be a factor in the purchase decision.

Today, Kindle enjoys a price advantage over the iPad. It is nearly half the price, starting at $260 versus $500 for the iPad, although the cheapest Kindle DX with an equivalent 9.7 inch screen is $489. That is pretty close already. What happens when the price of iPad-like devices trend down to a point of consumer indifference?

Moore's Law and business model innovation will drive the iPad-like devices to sub-$200 pricing. Unrealistic? The retail price of the iPhone 8GB dropped ~83% in 3 years from $599 to $99.

Also keep in mind that entertainment tablets are using different math from the Kindle. The device pricing will be subsidized by multiple revenue streamsdownloads of books, music, movies, games, apps, advertising, and more. Today I can get a cell phone device for free, will my iPad be free some day?

Competitors are playing a platform war. Is Kindle?

Apple, Google and Microsoft have massive investments in their respective mobile platforms. In particular, Apple is king of the mobile mountain. As Jobs declared today, Apple is now the largest mobile device company in the world.

This Apple sizzle has drawn 100,000+ developers and publishers to its iPhone (and now iPad) ecosystem. These apps are already available to entertain us in all sorts of ways on the iPad beyond what Apple exec Scott Forstall showed today.

Amazon knows this. Last week they announced a developer API is coming. So the question remains how robust is the API and will the developer community bite, or is it game over?

What would you do if you ran the Kindle?

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

Are you the sum of your thoughts? It's a hard question to answer, right? I'm trying to sort this out and would like your help.

The dissonance between the physical and ethereal nature of disembodied communication like the internet is a minefield for human interaction. Primarily because we rely heavily on physical cues and environmental variables to base our levels of connection with a person. We rely on their actions, not just words.

My assertion is that social networks exacerbate this inability to fully understand the people we are linked with in these networks due to experiencing their random thoughts.

Sure it is interesting to read what someone is doing throughout their day, but the only value is what the reader places on that thought to make it a reality in their own mind. Maybe that is the nature of connection?

What I am really trying to understand is that if a person can create real bonds simply through sharing their thoughts in social media?

I've personally been at what turned into social media for over 7 years. I've become many things to many people based on the types of content that I was producing. Much of that content was dependent on what I was interested in or experiencing at that time. Like this piece.

The sum of interactions in social media are related to those fleeting thoughts. When shared repeatedly with networks of people a notion of who that individual is are created. This give us the ability to create baselines for who we think a person is. A baseline for example being, they're nice or they are a jerk.

Again, we are only dealing with thoughts to create these notions. They are assumptions as to the true nature of a person that most have yet to meet. I would posit that what happens in social media and across social networks is the connecting of thoughts. If you like someone, you like their thoughts. If you dislike someone, you dislike their thoughts. Any judgments are based on these and most likely very little on physical actions. So, if you met them in the real world you would need to attempt to ascertain all over again who that individual in front of you is.

Maybe we're connecting thoughts first and then people with social media?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Is Social Media Worth Your Time? (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)
• The value of silence (smartblogs.com)
• My twitter Ethics (socialmediatoday.com)
• When authenticity isn't a choice (smartblogs.com)

Social Media: Connecting Thoughts Not People is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

It has taken me four days to finally coalesce my thoughts, emotions and the culinary happening that was the Audience Conference. Not to mention, time needed to forget about the hosts two-tone wing tips. Those shoes had enough pizazz for ten people . . . or one Loren Feldman.

I have to be honest, I didn't know what to expect with this conference. Feldman's persona is larger than life and often, from my perspective, sardonic to a fault. The Audience Conference, however, proved to me that the great ones are often misunderstood.

For anyone that I tried to explain this to in the past four days and failed miserably at, this is the most accurate and cohesive recollection that I can put together.

Like a mad scientist, Loren, with the help of his wife, Anton Mannering and a crew of others put together the most exciting event that I have attended in the last three years. It was closer to a Gnomedex than a podcamp and closer to performance art than theater.

To put together an event like this you need to be a strong character, like a front man in a band. You have to be ready to lead and put your stamp on the thing. When the first speakers hit the stage, after Loren reiterated the no laptop, no tweeting and no phone rule, it was evident that this was Loren's event his vision of doing it right. Speakers themselves had no slides or electronic accouterments to distract them (or keep on track) they were left to their own mental and physical faculties to sink or swim alone on stage. Most of them swam.

Being part of the audience and listening to speakers talk about audience created this weird duality between their experiences and the one in which we were participating. Thus, began the experiment the performance art. Orchestrated by Feldman and the cadre speakers, they one after another delivered a similar experience the audience present in the Hudson Theater.

I enjoyed what the speakers had to say and I know many of them personally. But there was one that stole the show for me, Jason Calacanis. Someone like Loren that has a strong online reputation which often precedes him in public. Jason came out, sat on the edge of the stage and delivered an open and honest account of how he gained his audience. Both those that admire his work and the haters. He talked candidly about building businesses and what he feels it takes to be an entrepreneur.

On haters you have failed them in some way
On entrepreneurs you have to have perseverance

These quotes might be empty out of context but in the one that Calacanis created by engaging the audience in the way he did it was like Joplin hitting the high notes. She got them, but they were warbly and honest. Whether you like them or not is a matter of taste and you can't knock the perseverance to perform them to an audience.

Once the event wrapped, the master of ceremonies was on the floor next to me. I took this as an opportunity to flub an otherwise awesome event by telling Loren that the conference had changed my opinion of him. It had, but that wasn't the most eloquent way to the thank the artist that had just played us, the audience, like puppets.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Audience Conference New York 2009 #audienceconf is a post from: TechStartups.com

By Senior Editor Kris Smith

In case you haven't noticed or cared, traditional agencies, the PR and Marketing types, have been contracting for the last few years. This year has been especially difficult for them with the rise of Social Media agencies. These upstarts are winning business and receiving opportunities that aren't even being pitched to their larger counterparts. This can be fixed . . . but there isn't much time.

What is a Social Media agency?

For those unaware of what a Social Media agency is it is an agency stocked with hardscrabble internet veterans and young talent steeped in the traditions of the tubes. I kid the youngsters, but they are, at this point truly digital natives. They grew up on the internet, were texting years before smart phone popularity and have been enculturated digital simply by being born. Often these agencies are small and their leadership, the aforementioned veterans, participated in the bubble of 2000 and have found a new source of revenue social media.

It didn't have to be this way

Traditional agencies should have seen this coming. This was a trend that they started over the last few years as their clients wanted to experiment with the precursors to social media, blogging and podcasting. During this time they would often offer small budgets to independent producers or find an overworked employee inhouse that knew something about the technologies. The deliverables were forced and atrocious (think astroturfing), poor strategy (if any) for syndication/consumption and zero metrics to show a client return on investment.

What was really happening was the large agencies were incubating social media agencies in the very earliest of stages. Even the social media agencies didn't know what they were yet. What they did know was that what they were producing wasn't working for the end client. And if this new stream of money was to continue coming in they would have to educate their handlers at the traditional agencies and develop their own tools to show ROI.

While budgets for blogging and podcasting began to dwindle, traditional agencies looked at them as passing trends. What they were missing is that the people they had been funding were now off creating tools like FiltrBox, Radian6 and putting their business strategies in place to harness the power of social media. They were going to fill the gap.

Not only have the new companies and agencies filled the gap, they are now taking away opportunities from traditional agencies. All the while, traditional agencies continue to lose money and talent. Much of that talent loss is due to layoffs. Agencies haven't figured out how to begin winning RFP's back and are letting the very people they need the most go. And when they go, they're shuffling off to boutiques and social media agencies to restart their careers with a fresh memory of the bureaucracy that didn't recognize their talent.

Saving themselves

Agencies have to stop thinking that they need more business development. They need solutions.

No amount of biz dev is going to save you when you have nothing to sell. It might work one time. But the client will realize it when they ask what they measurements for ROI are. No more biz dev or placement talk.

What kind of solutions do agencies need? The kind that evolve out of a strategy for engagement. The kind that evolve from a desire to meet the new requirements to participate in social media like listening. They need tools that show competency in measuring the strategy and tactics of a digital campaign.

The key to their continued existence is to prove they are needed. By creating solutions inhouse like monitoring software and metrics analysis hey will be able to monitor new trends and hopefully find themselves riding high for the next wave of competitors.

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

Post from: TechStartups.com

By Senior Editor Kris Smith

The adage, You get what you pay for, is true in almost every situation that would apply it to except the current state of open software. It is better than it has ever been and it is ready to help your business do the same.

Who is to thank for this? You are. That is if you are sharing your ideas online in the form of comments, blog posts or making media. Really. It is your ideas for combined with those of designers and developers that are pushing open source software development in new directions that better meet your business needs. By taking part in the conversation you are participating in the remix culture.

For years the remix culture was focused on art and music. It was based on the idea that prior art could be made better with with an individual's own spin applied to it. Software is not really any different. I would argue that the remix culture's largest impact, currently, is on software development and its ability to perpetuate itself . From this comes open source software that drives traditional software makers like Microsoft to make their products better.

So the next time you are listening to The Gray Album just think about how your endorsement for this art form is having an impact on your business in ways that help your bottom line.

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

Post from: TechStartups.com

Neale S. Godfrey, author of the book Money Doesn't Grow On Trees, writes: "Kids don't get it if you don't talk about." Mr. Godfrey is talking to people like me, and if I don't start listening, I'm going to have a big problem on my hands. My four year old daughter is a born shopper. And, as the Co-Founder of a company fighting everyday to bring sensible saving back into the public consciousness after decades of absence, I often worry that I enable her in the very habits I'm encouraging SmartyPig customers to break.

Like most couples these days, my wife, Sara, and I have been engaging in serious discussions regarding money. How we spend money. How we save money. How we use credit. We are pretty normal in that these conversations, while productive, aren't all that much fun. That said, we force ourselves to sit down and talk about money and we are pretty diligent about maintaining healthy attitudes about spending and saving. But when it comes to how we use money with regard to our daughter, all common sense flies out the window.

Our daughter has a piggy bank. And while it's our pocket change that goes into it, she understands the value of what we put in it and that she is rewarded when it fills up. We also require that she perform simple tasks around the house for which, when a series of days are filled in as "complete," she gets a reward. If she plays her cards right, does as she's told, and is patient, she usually ends up with a "treat" every few weeks or so. Problem is she never stops wanting or asking for the most trivial things, and we end up like this episode of Dr. Phil - indulging her whims, rather than being responsible parents who model fiscal fitness.

I tell my wife, "It has to stop." Then I tell her again the next time and the next. But I'm just as guilty as she is. From my perspective, these little treats are almost immediately disregarded and considered "junk." If I sound frustrated, it's because I am. Our unplanned spending on small gifts for our daughter has gotten totally out of control. But it's easier to just go with it than to say no. Who doesn't want a smile and the baby blues? But what are we doing to her as a result? What kind of habits are we teaching her? Every other aspect of her life is meticulously dissected. We are completely focused on turning this healthy, intelligent, productive kid into a healthy, intelligent, productive adult. Why can't we be the same when it comes to teaching her about money?

A recent issue of Better Homes & Gardens offered us three easy tips to begin the process of taking control:

1. Don't Forget Who's In Charge - Marketing machine or not - and good God if there isn't a Disney princess on everything! - You can say "no."
2. Talk About Spending Decisions - Don't lie and say, "I can't afford it." Explain priorities - even to four-year-olds.
3. Hand Some Over - Give your kids the power. Let them make the transaction. Let them see the difference between need and want.

So, can Sara and I do this? Do we need a chart that we make an "X" on every day we don't wimp out and take the easy road? From time to time, I'm going to let you know how it's going. And, of course, time will tell. We at SmartyPig are spending a lot of time these days discussing money and children and families. And while I pride myself on being a good listener, this is one conversation I'd really like to begin truly contributing to.

And I'd like you all to contribute as well. I'd love any tips you might have or anecdotes about your successes or failures in teaching your kids smart savings habits, just send them here jgaskell(at)smartypig(dot)com. We may even feature your ideas or stories on our blog. Thanks!

Do problems with your brand mean more opportunities in social media?

I spend a lot of time thinking about how companies can use social media tools to enhance their communications efforts.

• Some involve a new take on traditional outbound or inbound marketing.
• Some are conversational, building relationships rather than selling.
• Some focus on customer service and solving pain points for people.

It occurs to me that to some extent, the effectiveness of two of the options above may depend on the state of your existing brand.

Caveat: This is by no means the only factor involved in this decision, which is why companies need to approach social media from a strategic perspective (with full consideration of multiple factors) rather than a tactical one.

If your brand is healthy and people generally think positive things about your organization, well-targeted communications along interruption and destination-based lines may be well received. However, if your brand has little equity and people are distrustful, it may be that you have more to gain from other social media approaches than healthy brands.

Why?

Because the bar is set low.

Wooden corporations can benefit greatly from allowing some personality within their online activities. As I often say, people don't want relationships with brands; they want them with people. (Note: I'm not talking about slick artwork and design; I'm talking about real people.)

Similarly, if your brand is on thin ice, online customer service improvements can be received with open arms. Peoples' expectations are so low that just solving problems (essentially, taking them from a negative to a neutral state with the product/service) can have positive effects on your brand. Companies like Dell and Comcast bave benefited greatly from this approach.

As I noted recently, it's when times are tough that you can differentiate your company.

What do you think? Do you think companies have more to gain from social media when their brand is suffering?

(Image: Shutterstock)

Some newspapers scrambling to survive the internet condemn websites like Google News and the Huffington Post. Aggregators, they say, need to pay for the right to point to a newspaper's site. Public radio stations, on the other hand, face competition from the internet as well and are just as competitive between themselves as they are collaborative. Somehow, they've responded differently to new media. There may be no better example of that than an iPhone application built by several large public radio organizations and called Public Radio Player. The team behind the app launched a major new release this morning.

The application aggregates live streaming and recorded radio broadcasts from across the US, displays their current and planned content schedules and now offers a search function that stretches across all those different types of content: live streams, podcasts and text show descriptions. It's a free app and the the organization that makes it hosts almost nothing on its own servers. The end result is a remarkable user experience that ought to be an inspiration for old media of every kind. It isn't perfect, but it's getting better fast.

Sponsor

The app was made by a non-profit organization called Public Radio Exchange (RPX). RPX was founded and is run by Jake Shapiro, a man who used to be an associate director at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Shapiro used to produce an NPR radio show with Christopher Lyndon and before that he was one of the first tinkerers with web distribution of music for his band Two Ton Shoe.

Two Ton Shoe didn't find a lot of success in the United States, but thanks to the long tail of the web Shapiro says they somehow found a big fan base in Korea. The band toured there and Korean bands have covered some of their songs. "I'm a Korean rock star," Shapiro says, "and I believe there's a 'Korea' out there for everybody."

About a year ago Shapiro says he called around all the major players in public radio and argued that they had a unique opportunity if they could collaborate and create a really strong offering. An organization called American Public Media decided to contribute the work they had done so far on their own iPhone app to Shapiro's project and NPR and Public Radio International agreed to lend their support to what would become the Public Radio Tuner, today renamed the Public Radio Player.

Funding Local Radio on the iPhone

Public Radio Player could facilitate that long tail experience for obscure local public radio content by making it far more available on the iPhone. But PaidContent's Rafat Ali worries that by freeing radio listeners all the more from their local radio station, the Player could sever the loyalty and fund raising connections that keep public radio alive.

To that concern Shapiro has two interesting responses. First, he says that survey data shows most users prefer listening to their local stations on the app, along with a variety of favorites from elsewhere.

Even more interesting is the project's collaboration with Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Doc Searls. Searls is at Harvard's Berkman Center now, developing a framework for what's being called Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) - a customer-based response to the business paradigm of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The VRM project and Shapiro's RPX are developing ways for Public Radio Player users to track what they listen to on the player and make financial contributions to the radio stations they've consumed from the most.

Shapiro says that part of the project faces a major roadblock from Apple. Though Apple introduced in-application payments last month, the feature is only available to paid apps (Public Radio Player is free) and charitable contributions through the iPhone are strictly prohibited. They can't even be talked about, Shapiro says, because Apple doesn't want to deal with the possibility of charity scams, there's tax complications, the platform's standard 30% fee for payments isn't tenable in a non-profit context and Apple has no financial incentive to solve this sticky complex of problems.

For now the app is funded by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That funding is up for renewal now. Shapiro says that a second round of funding would be used to create "showcase apps that would break new ground and create new technology." He says the company is particularly interested in technologies that represent a hybrid of digital and broadcast. "With radio," he says, "there is still a tremendous amount of reach that you don't want to give up on when you move into the digital space."

Fixing the App

That hybrid paradigm is very well represented by the new version of the Public Radio Player. The previous version, called Public Radio Tuner, was one of the most popular free apps in the iPhone store but it didn't really work that well. Radio streams got dropped a lot. That's no longer a big problem with version 2.0.

The new version of the app tackles the problem of dropped streams by making the buffering settings much more sophisticated. Remember, the App doesn't host any of the audio, it just points to the live streams or podcasts stored on public radio stations' own servers. Project manager Matt MacDonald says the app now determines what kind of bandwidth the receiving phone has, then buffers the inbound stream accordingly before serving it up to listeners. The end result is a radically more usable radio app on wifi, 3G or Edge connections.

It's still not perfect; this like every app is at the mercy of AT&T's wireless network, but dropped streams appear to be much, much less frequent than they used to be. The interface sometimes hangs when loading menus, but Shapiro says that with the new release today bug fixes are a top priority and though crash reports are appearing infrequently, they are being closely watched. "Just shake the phone," he jokes. "Then it will work better."

More Than One Kind of Content

The new app brings a whole lot more radio to your iPhone. In addition to pointing to hundreds of radio streams, RPX has co-ordinated a number of different sources to pull show schedules down to be stored locally on your phone. "Scheduling data has been a big effort," Shapiro says. "It never existed in one place and is still a moving target."

A company called Public Interactive (recently acquired by NPR from Public Radio International) has a metadata tool that originally captured music playlists but now publishes radio show schedules as well. NPR and many station websites also display schedules on their own websites. PRX aggregates all that data, stores it on your phone, syncs it with the radio stream links and then checks for changes each time you launch the Public Radio Player app.

Having the particular show that's playing displayed along with a station name makes a very big difference in the user experience.

The 2.0 version of the app also includes support for "on demand" or podcast listening. Hundreds of podcasts are navigable by featured shows, category or alphabetically. Podcasts are integrated into some of the show schedules as well. When listening to a streaming station, you can view the rest of the day's schedule and see what other shows will be broadcast later. Then you can choose to listen to previous recorded editions of those shows. It's a pretty seamless experience.

Search is No Small Matter

The new search functionality integrates all of the above, letting you search for keywords or topics and finding both recorded and currently live shows that match your search. MacDonald says the company used an open source program called ThinkingSphynx on the back end, worked closely with the NPR API team and is still working on teaching local radio stations about the importance of standards-based content titling. Listening to streams and podcasts on iTunes or an iPod may not have been so difficult with incomplete file names, but show a radio station how broken its content looks in a dynamic iPhone directory and the message comes through loud and clear.

There have been other efforts to index all the public radio streams online; Public Radio Fan is the most notable and is more international, but is less sophisticated and is based on the desktop and browser. (After listening to some international broadcasts via Public Radio Fan it's hard not to be a little disappointed with even Public Radio Player's extensive but exclusively US menu.)

As a media technology, Public Radio Player offers a unique blend of content aggregation, focus on both real time and recorded content and extensive data integration on the back end. All on the iPhone. Its design and performance continue to improve. It's a very impressive offering in terms of content delivery; if it can find a way to use the new platform it's on to transcend the public radio paradigm of on-air pledge drives, that would really be remarkable, wouldn't it?

Jake Shapiro says that offering Public Radio Player on other platforms, including a web interface, is a logical next step. You can follow the project's progress on the Public Radio Player blog and download the application here.