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Jan

30 Best New Android Apps And Games From Last Week (12/28/10 - 01/03/11)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Best Apps/Games/LWPs Of The Week, Games, News

Last Updated: April 13th, 2011

Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications and games that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. Happy New Year, everyone! 2011 will be the year of Android apps and games - you can take this to the bank.

Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info.

Featured App

Yumsters

This week's featured app is a game called Yumsters, sponsored by HeroCraft. If you've been waiting to pick up a HeroCraft game or 2, now would be the perfect time to do so, as they are running a 65% off all games holiday promotion.

Jan

MIUI Digital Clock Widget Hits Android Market - Give Your Handset The MIUI Feel Tonight

Posted by Stephen Tenerowicz in Applications, News, Off-Topic

The MIUI ROM is definitely one of the most magical things on Android today. A mix between iOS and Android, the ROM is beautiful, fast, and allows for user-created themes. At times, it doesn't even look like Android. It is a real change; different, but great. In my humble opinion, two of the best parts of the ROM are the beautiful weather widget and digital clock widget. For some time now I have wanted both the digital clock widget and weather widget on my 2.2.1 Nexus One, and now thanks to the development team Factory Widgets, I am now able to use the MIUI digital clock widget outside of the MIUI ROM, and so can you!

Jan

Man Uses Geek Wizardry, Magic To Use HTC EVO 4G As Garage Door Opener

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, Apps/Games, EVO 4G (Supersonic), News, Off-Topic

In an impressive display of nerdery, XDA member JsChiSurf (who you may remember as the guy behind the re-mapped EVO buttons and a shout-out in Fresh 3.5) has used a host of tools and tricks to create an app that allows him to use his EVO as a garage door opener. Check out the video below (it's on the longer side at nearly 4 minutes, but it's got all the details).

In short, he connects an old Linux server (which was already running in his garage) to a serial relay controller, which is in turn connected to his garage door, to do the trick.

Jan

Solar Wind: An Amazing, Trippy Live Wallpaper

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Applications, Apps/Games, News

Many Android owners seem to have a love/hate relationship with live wallpapers - no matter how stunning they are, they generally zap performance and battery life too much to be used for long. Here's one that might work on both sides of the coin: meet Solar Wind LWP.

As you can see, it's... well, it's a bit hard to describe. It mainly consists of multi-colored strings of dots swirling around. A video can do it better justice:

^{Video courtesy of YouTuber bmmahfood.}

The app seems to be wildly popular: it's been on the Market for 19 days, and broke 250,000 downloads after just 12.

Dec

Viewsonic G Tablet, From Rags To Riches - An Owner's Guide To Making The Best Of A Great Tablet

Posted by Jakub Glodek in Applications, Development, Froyo 2.2, gTablet (SMB-A1002), Tips & Tutorials, Viewsonic

Last Updated: December 31st, 2010

Over the past couple of weeks, I spent countless hours debating whether I should wait around a few months and see what tablets come out or get one now. In the latter case, which tablet was right for me?

Let me start out with what I wanted out of a tablet. First and foremost, I needed a device that let me check my email and read the news. Every morning, I wake up, grab my Sprint EVO 4G, and check my email using Gmail and my work email using Exchange. I then drift to the USA Today App to read the day’s news.

Dec

21 Best New Android Apps And Games From Last Week (12/21/10 - 12/27/10)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in Applications, Best Apps/Games/LWPs Of The Week, Games, News

Last Updated: April 13th, 2011

Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications and games that went live in the Market in the previous week or so.

Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info.

Featured App

Tunerfish

This week's featured app is sponsored by Tunerfish - a social TV/movie/video platform.

Tunerfish is especially dear to me personally, as I was 1 of 2 developers working on it for the past 3 months. You can read about Tunerfish and some of my thoughts on Android development in the article below.

Dec

QuickDesk Dev Releases Calendr 1.0 To Android Market, Minimalists Rejoice!

Posted by Stephen Tenerowicz in Applications, Apps/Games, News

Faruq Rasid, the developer behind QuickDesk, has developed and now finally released a minimalist calendar widget called Calendr that's inspired by Clockr. The widget is simple and attractive, showing your next upcoming event, as well as the date and time, from your Google Calendar. As a complete minimalist when it comes to my home screen, I am truly loving it!

Unlike early Alpha versions, the 1.0 version of Calendr only updates when an event is created, edited or deleted. The widget has a lot of customization options, including font color, font size, font alignment, font shadow, uppercase/lowercase, and semi-transparent background, to name a few.

Dec

Your Move, Shazam - SoundHound's Free Android App Now Features Unlimited Music IDs

Posted by Nate Kimmey in Applications, News

The developers of SoundHound, a music recognition app, have decided to update the free version of their app to allow an unlimited number of music IDs, instead of the previous limit of 5 each month.

Meanwhile, SoundHound's biggest competitor, Shazam, has a very similar offering: a free app that has the same limit of 5 music IDs per month. If Shazam does nothing, which is hard to imagine, and you don't plan on spending any money, there's no contest regarding which app you are going to end up using.

Whether SoundHound might be digging itself into a hole with this move or not is unclear, but unlimited song recognition is one less reason for customers to drop $4.99 for SoundHound Infinity.

Dec

VLC Player Coming To Android In "A Matter Of Weeks"

Posted by Anuj Ahooja in Applications, News

The incredibly popular VLC Player is finally coming to Android after months of hard work by the open source project developers. Originally a desktop media center for Linux, Windows, and Mac, this versatile player will bring many new video-playing features to our beloved OS including a wide variety of formats such as DivX and Dolby TrueHD. The lead developer in the project, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, has confirmed that it will hit the Android Market in "just a few weeks", which means that Android will ~~be the first mobile platform to have a version of this software~~ finally follow iOS and get its own port (thanks, Mikeyy).

Dec

ADW Launcher Ex Finally Released, Transitions To A Whole New Dimension

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, Apps/Games, Development, News

Those of you acquainted with the inimitable Ander Webbs have been waiting for this one for a while. Once dubbed ADW Freak, the souped-up version of everyone's favourite open-source launcher has arrived, and it's now named ADW Ex.

On the surface, Ex brings ... well, it brings crazy transitions and UI effects, mainly. But underneath all that is some pretty impressive performance improvements. In a launcher, the real place where performance counts is in the drawer scrolling, and if you've been feeling that ADW is a bit laggy lately, Ex will quell your frustration with its silky smoothness. Combine that with some cheekily named "4D" effects, a handful of desktop scrolling transitions, and the ability to tinker with your desktop icons and you have a pretty compelling revamp of this third-party desktop stalwart.