A few Android apps, rated for simplicity

I got my first smartphone in early December. It's an Android phone, the Samsung Nexus S to be exact. In that time I've downloaded and tried a handful of different apps, so I'd like to share what I think. When it comes to computer software, I appreciate simplicity. Sometimes the program with less features is the one I'd rather use, if it has the features that I want. With more features, the program can be cumbersome to use, and it's more likely to slow down the computer. So when I started looking for some Android apps, simplicity was one of the main things I was looking for. So without further ado, here are the apps I'm running and what I think of their simplicity, in alphabetical order:

3G Watchdog by Richard Gruet - 4.5 stars (out of 5) - free
This handy app tracks your data plan usage, and it can show your total on a home screen widget. You tell it when your billing cycle starts and what your quota is, and it will monitor it for you. You can also set it to turn off your data when you reach your limit and alert you when you're close to it. Not much feature bloat here. The only things stopping it from getting 5 stars are two buttons: one that advertises the paid version of this app, and one that advertises an unrelated app. (The paid version can also tell you which apps are using your data plan, but since Android 4.0 has this feature built in, I don't think I'll pay for it. Just need to wait for them to send Android 4.0 to my phone...)

AK Notepad by Catch.com - 4 stars (out of 5) - free
Probably the only feature my old phone had that this phone didn't come with: an app for writing short notes to myself. This one's pretty simple, and you can make it alarm at a certain time for certain notes if you want. It occasionally asks if I want to sync my notes with a Catch.com account, which is a bit annoying since I don't have an account with them. Automatic backups are a useful feature, but I don't really feel like signing up for another website, even though it's free. The app can export the notes to the phone's USB storage, which then lets me back up the notes myself, but that's more work.

Antivirus Free by AVG Mobilation - 3 stars (out of 5) - free
I got this app more for its anti-theft and phone location features, rather than for antivirus. Antivirus is good to have too, but doesn't provide perfect protection. Its anti-theft features allow you to log into a website and do a few different things on your phone: turn on the GPS and show the phone's location on your computer, lock the phone remotely, make the phone ring even if it's in silent mode (which seems to take a few minutes), and even wipe all the data from the phone. It also includes some tune-up features that are supposed to help you save power. It has some features that I don't use, such as a task killer (see this article for a reason why) and it takes an unnecessarily high number of clicks to reach the tune-up features, so its simplicity leaves something to be desired. I've heard that Lookout Antivirus has a simpler interface, but I installed AVG because the free version of lookout doesn't support wiping data from your phone.

KJV/NIV Bible by Tecarta - 4.5 stars (out of 5) - KJV is free; NIV is CAD$6.09 on its own or $5.94 as an add-on; other translations are available too.
This app makes it easy to navigate various Bible translations, view two versions side-by-side, and search the Bible for certain words. Clean interface, easy to navigate your history and take notes. It can read the Bible out loud to you, with a computerized voice. Some of the cross-references between verses are kind of useless, which is a mild annoyance. But overall it's an excellent app, and the cheapest one that I found for the paid translations. (Yes, there are some that get you free access to just about any translation, but I think most of those require internet access.)

LED Light by picolyl - 5 stars (out of 5) - free
Light goes on. Light goes off. That's about it. Use your camera flash LED as a flashlight. My phone isn't even listed on the list of supported phones, but it seems to woyrk. No feature bloat, no ads, and no cost. And you can put it on your home screen as a widget, so just touching the icon on your home screen once will toggle the light.

ScanLife Barcode & QR Reader - 2 stars (out of 5) - free
The first app that I ever uninstalled. It reads barcodes and QR codes. For barcodes, it can show you the price of the item you scanned at certain online retailers. And for QR codes it shows you the data in the code or takes you to the webpage referenced by the code. Most of the time it's a simple, easy-to-use app (although I've scanned numerous products that it couldn't find online), but occasional annoyances convinced me to uninstall it once I found a replacement app. When I first got it, it regularly asked me to go to the Android Market to rate the app. So one time I hit the "OK" button, went to the Market, then quickly exited out of it without leaving a rating. ScanLife shut up about that after that. But it still occasionally asked me to take a quick demographic survey, which I didn't feel like doing. (I'll post a review of the app that I got to replace this once I have some more time to play around with it.)

SlideIT Keyboard by Dasur - 4 stars (out of 5) - CAD$5.99, or 15-day free trial
I got this one when it was on sale for 10 cents. It's similar to the Swype keyboard that comes with some Android devices (but not my Nexus S). It replaces the touch-screen keyboard with a different touch-screen keyboard. This one lets you type by sliding your finger around the keyboard rather than touching each key individually. Then it searches its dictionary to figure out what word you were trying to type. If it's not completely sure, it gives you a number of words to choose from. After a while of using this, I think it sped up my typing. And it can import your contact list into the dictionary, so if your friend has an unusual first or last name, it's no problem for this keyboard. (In my limited experience with Swype, I don't think Swype has this feature.) Not much to annoy me here, except that it periodically contacts the developer's servers to confirm your software license. So it will use up a little bit of your data plan, and I'm not sure if it works if you're out of range or have data disabled for a long time.

All prices are in Canadian dollars, and may not be up-to-date. Keep in mind that my star ratings are rating only for simplicity; they are not an overall app rating.

That's it for now. I have some more apps than this on my phone, so I'll add reviews of those sometime later. And I'll try to keep this post up-to-date.

Online wedding invitations

As the wedding draws closer, I'd like to share some comments on one aspect of wedding planning: the invitations.

We decided to go the cheaper / more environmentally friendly / possibly easier route and do online invitations. We decided to use an online invitation service rather than just sending out an email ourselves, because those services can manage RSVPs and stuff. We figured Facebook invites would be too informal for a wedding. So we tried out a few other invitation services by sending Cathy and myself invitations to a sample event.

The first one we tried was Evite, because I'd heard of it before. This turned out to be the most annoying invitation website that we tried. When we replied to our invitation, it asked us to pick a password. It seemed to want all the guests to sign up for site memberships, but I think there was a small link allowing guests not to get a membership. Maybe there's a way for the event creator to disable this option, but I didn't go searching for it. I find it annoying when I'm pressured to sign up for a website (which is part of the reason this blog is on a service where you don't need a membership to leave comments), and we didn't want to annoy our guests, so Evite was out. They also have advertising on the invitations, which seemed tacky for a wedding invitation. We're trying to keep the wedding fairly simple and inexpensive, but it is still a much more significant event than an ordinary party.

Then we tried Pingg. Their free service is a lot less annoying than Evite. Guests don't get pressured into signing up. And you have the option of paying a small fee to remove the ads from the invitations.

Finally, we tried Sendomatic. They specialize in ad-free invitations, so their free service can only invite 10 guests per event. For their paid service, you have to pay based on the number of people invited. Like Pingg, they don't pressure guests into registering for their site. Overall, I think their invitations look a bit more elegant than Pingg's. On Pingg, you choose a dominant picture for your invitation, or upload your own. On Sendomatic, you choose a background image, and you can also upload an image that will appear over the background, above the text.

We decided to use Sendomatic, but I would not hesitate to recommend Pingg too. Either option is a lot cheaper and probably a lot less work than mailing invitations. And if some people on your invite list don't have email, you could print off a copy and mail it to them.

And now the downside of using a service like this: some email services will put the invitations in the spam folder. Fortunately, these services let you see which invitees have clicked on the link in their email to view the actual invitation. Then you can contact the people who haven't seen the invitation and remind them that there's an invitation in their email somewhere. You can also re-send the invitation (without paying an extra fee) if they already cleared out their spam folder. Contacting these people was probably at least half the work of doing online invitations, but probably still less work than managing the RSVPs from paper invitations.

So overall, I give electronic wedding invitations a thumbs up, but they have their annoying traits.

And as the wedding draws near, I'm counting my blessings. I've found someone who is fun to be with, a great friend and companion, beautiful, and who brings out the best in me. (That's four, but there are plenty more.)

Blogging poster

Check out this poster about blogging...

Miscellaneous thoughts

Two weeks ago, I reformatted the hard drive on my four-year-old laptop computer. (Don't worry, I backed up all my important files first.) I reinstalled a bunch of stuff and restored my documents, photos, music, and stuff. The computer is running better than it has in at least three years.

Last weekend I went camping in Banff. Camping can be a lot of fun even if it snows a bit. Fortunately we had one day of good weather anyway, and we spent part of another day at Banff Hot Springs, which doesn't need good weather. I posted some photos here.

A friend who I saw during the camping trip claims most of the people who contributed to the UN's climate change report aren't actually climatologists, and that most climatologists don't think humans are significantly contributing to climate change. I want to look this up and see if there's some evidence to refute that. But so far I've been too busy (having fun) or lazy. So do any of you know if this is true? And am I arrogant for thinking he's wrong about this (and some other things) even though he's more well-read and a more skilled debater than I am?

Silverlight

A while ago when I visited the Microsoft website, it tried to get me to install something called Silverlight. I turned it down and looked up a bit more information about it. It turns out that Microsoft finally made a product to compete with the Adobe Flash browser add-on that almost everyone has.

I'm not militantly anti-Microsoft, but I would like to see them lose some of their market dominance. Generally, I don't think monopolies are a good thing, so I like to support Microsoft's competition, especially free high-quality programs. But where does Adobe fit in here? Adobe is one of the few software companies that truly dominates the market for software that almost everyone has. How many computers have you used lately that don't have Flash and Adobe Reader installed?

So in the Flash vs Silverlight battle, who should I support? Until now, Adobe had a virtual monopoly in that type of software, but if somebody has to have a monopoly, it's nice if it's not Microsoft. On the other hand, competition can encourage innovation. I ended up installing Silverlight, and I think its video quality is better than Flash's, so I see innovation happening already.

What would really be nice is if websites didn't tie people to certain products. If Flash and Silverlight could be replaced with an open standard and anyone could make programs that support that standard, then I wouldn't need multiple products that basically do the same thing.

Confirming Stereotypes

When I moved in September, I signed up for one of those deals where you sign up for extra high speed internet and they give you a computer. (Or maybe I have to pay an extra $5 a month for the computer, but it still works out to a good deal, if it's a computer that you want.)

The computer arrived last week. I set it up and browsed the manual and found this warning:

"WARNING: Handling the cord on this product or cords associated with accessories sold with this product will expose you to lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Wash hands after handling."

Then I looked at the label attached to the power cord. It said, "Made in China." I try not to believe stereotypes, but Chinese manufacturers are making it difficult. At least they give warnings when they sell lead products to adults.

Or does lead only cause cancer and birth defects in California? In that case, I'm safe.