App Reviews

Jul

New Yelp For Android v2.0 Arrives, Brings Mobile Check-Ins, “Monocle” Augmented Reality, Review Drafting, And A Bag Of Force Closes

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in App Reviews, Applications, News, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

A notification about the new version of Yelp just popped up on my EVO, and without thinking much about it, I gave it a whirl. Ohh, version 2.0 - it must be bringing new features, I thought. Indeed, it was. And I'm in love with them.

New In Yelp 2.0

Here's the list of the most interesting stuff:

Mobile check-ins
"Monocle"
Review drafting (though not posting)
Adding photos, tips, and bookmarks
A brand new look
A bunch of force closes, which I hope would be fixed soon.

As you can see the last part mentions force closes which happened to me when I didn't have a GPS signal, but once you see the new features, I'm sure you will forgive Yelp developers for the time being, until they roll out some fixes.

Jul

CyanogenMod 6 Hands-On: First Impressions

Posted by David Ruddock in App Reviews, Apps/Games, Froyo 2.2, Mods, Other Reviews, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Yesterday, we broke the news that CyanogenMod 6 Alpha 1 was released to the public. Having successfully installed it on an AT&T Nexus One, we can now give you the lowdown on what this release (so far) contains.

User Interface

Essentially, users can expect an experience that will not stray too far from what CyanogenMod 5.08 changed in terms of the UI. An updated version of ADW Launcher does provide a few enhancements, though. Namely, tilt-sensing home screens are now a default feature.

This is good news for everyone. Given that most touch screen phones are easier to type on and hold with two hands in the landscape format, home screens to match are a welcome addition to the overall experience.

Jun

[Giveaway] Vlingo Voice Control App Reviewed + We’ve Got 25 Licenses To Give Away!

Posted by Chris Dehghanpoor in App Reviews, Applications, Contests / Giveaways, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

The winners have been selected and contacted via email.

Enjoy your Vlingo licenses and look out for future AndroidPolice contests!

Living in Houston, you encounter some pretty horrendous traffic. Out of the 45 minutes I spend commuting(one way), about 20 are probably spent at a red light.

With all of that downtime it’s pretty tempting to reach over and check your latest email, or, if you’re like me, compulsively check the market for updates, but every time you do so, you’re risking injuring yourself, and those around you. We all know it’s dangerous to use the cell phone while driving, but how many of us actually heed those warnings?

Jun

SysAdmin Series, Article #6: Network Tools And Whois Lookups

Posted by Ian Douglas in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

This SysAdmin Series article will cover four of my favorite tools as a sysadmin: two for analyzing network information, and one each for doing DNS lookups and Whois lookups on domain names. As with most apps I cover in my SysAdmin Series articles, I need to fully uninstall the app and wipe all prior data before demonstrating it here for you to protect my employer in case there’s any sensitive information lurking about. As such, don’t be too worried if apps with historical data appear relatively empty.

As a teaser for this weekend’s SysAdmin Series article, I’ll be analyzing a few commercial (paid) VNC clients in the Market.

Jun

SysAdmin Series, Article #5: FTP Clients

Posted by Ian Douglas in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

First off, my apologies for the late posting in the SysAdmin series (or very early since tomorrow is Thursday). I had to deal with a double HDD failure on my home PC this weekend which ate up 14+ waking hours between Saturday night and all day Sunday, which would have been my prime writing time. Then the third HDD in that system crashed Monday evening, egad, what are the odds. I digress…

I've been looking for an easy way recently to manage configuration files for remote servers without having to deal with subversion, and even looked at some sort of file sync with Evernote/Dropbox via Android using an FTP client, but neither Evernote or Dropbox give you easy access to files on your SD storage when you download files.

Jun

SysAdmin Series, Article #4: Port Scandroid vs OscanO

Posted by Ian Douglas in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

A good diagnostic tool for any sysadmin is a port scanner to ensure a firewall is working as intended to open or close ports. When you want a quick and dirty scanning tool, there are some great free apps in the Market to do the trick. A quick search in the Market shows two apps which seem to be popular: OscanO and Port Scandroid.

Port Scandroid

This free app in the Market was written by Rich Jones of NewFreedomApps, found at http://www.thenewfreedom.net/ and the app is described by the author like this:

Port Scandroid is a port scanner for Android. It displays the reachability of a range of ports for a given host.

Jun

SysAdmin Series, Article #3: Nagios Monitoring

Posted by Ian Douglas in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Nagios is by far one of the best solutions for monitoring just about everything on a server, and it’s excellent API system means that anything it doesn’t include out of the box can be written in just about any programming language as long as the program output conforms to their standard. I’ve personally written dozens of modules for micro-managing network interfaces, disk IO and so on. I’ve even heard of elaborate schemes of detecting when system load is too high on web servers and launching more Amazon EC2 instances, or checking when load is low enough to terminate EC2 instances, all fully automated.

Jun

SysAdmin Series, Article #2: Decaf - Manage And Monitor Your Amazon EC2 Infrastructure

Posted by Ian Douglas in App Reviews, Applications, News, Reviews, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Welcome back to the SysAdmin Series, where we pick apart another app geared towards system administration. My apologies for missing Sunday’s post, a family emergency kept me offline most of the weekend.

One of the very first apps I installed on my Nexus One when it arrived in February, was Decaf by 9Apps; it was also the first paid app I bought for my Nexus One. They’ve played with their pricing scheme over time – I bought the app for 4.99 Euros mid-February, they raised the price to 9.99 Euros a month later, then up to 24.99 Euros a few weeks ago, before settling on the current 19.99 Euros price.

Jun

doubleTwist Releases Android Media Player App

Posted by Ian Douglas in App Reviews, Applications, News, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Jon Lech Johansen from doubleTwist wrote to us today to let us know that they have launched a free app in the Market to pair with their popular desktop sync software for Mac and PC:

Today we launched our Android Player for music, podcasts and videos and it’s available in the Android Market as a free download. Google has built Android into a powerful, open platform; however users have been unsatisfied by the default media software built into Android and are not fully utilizing the media capabilities of their phones.

Jon goes on to list the features of the new Android app such as music and video playback in the same app with a simple interface, playback of iTunes-created playlists, support for audio and video podcasts, and support for ratings and play counts.

May

The Best 5 Twitter Apps For Android

Posted by John Thompson in App Reviews, Applications, Apps/Games, Reviews

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

With so many Twitter clients available for Android, it’s hard to decide which one best suits you. Although I don’t think that there’s a ‘best’ Twitter app on Android, because different applications excel in different areas, I’ve selected five of, what I believe to be, the best clients available right now. Each app is available on the Market for free, with some offering ‘Pro’ versions too.