Essential Android Apps Every Geek Should Have

Remember when I said I'd be doing my "Angry Cyberpunk Reviews" on a regular basis?

Well, here's Essential Android Apps Every Geek Should Have instead.

***Does not cover rooting or custom operating systems.***

These apps are listed in no particular order, and this is in no way a complete  list. And by Geek, I mean a nerd that is leaning towards techie - a techie of course,  being a geek. ERRORLEVEL.10(circular argument)


[SwiFTP]: A portmanteau of "Swift" and "FTP", SwiFTP is a utility that will run an FTP server on your Android device. If you're a geek, chances  are you have a WiFi network setup at your place, and your Android device automatically connects to your network when in-range. With SwiFTP, when you want to  transfer a file to or from your Android device, just fire up your FTP client (FTP Commander is a good one, and there are other freeware clients out there) and Bob's your uncle! SwiFTP even lets you set the starting directory, so, if, for instance, you mostly transfer photos, you can set it to begin in your photo directory to speed up the process. I use it for pretty much every transfer I have to do. My favorite is when I download a free eBook, I can FTP it directly to Aldiko's "import" folder to speed up the process. SwiFTP includes the option to require user authentication to keep things private, and a web-proxy service to transfer files when there's no WiFi available.

[Aldiko]: Aldiko is one of the many free eReaders available for the Android OS. You can download free or not-free directly from the Android Market, Aldiko's book market, or anywhere else that you can find one. (Google!) As I recall, Aldiko supports ePub, eBook, and PDF formats. I like using Aldiko to read in bed at night, because it has a "night" feature that swaps the color palette to white text on a black background, which is a lot easier on the eyes than black text on a white background, or having a bright reading lamp on that disrupts your partner. Aldiko works fantastically on Android Tablets, too. Their larger screen size makes reading much more a-kin to reading an actual book. Suck it, Kindle!

[Barcode-Scanner]: So you've got Aldiko on your phone to read your electronic editions of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux or Twilight or whatever you're into, and you've got SwiFTP so that you can navigate your phone's memory or MicroSD card via your computer wirelessly, and transfer files, like your eBooks, photos, or whatever. But now, you want to share these apps with other Android users. That's where Barcode-Scanner comes in. Barcode-Scanner uses the phone's camera to "scan" a barcode or QR-Code - any barcode or QR-Code - and display that information on the screen. So, if I want to share Aldiko with one of my friends, I can use Barode-Scanner to generate a little QR-Code on my phone's screen, and then my friend can use their phone to scan the QR-Code, and that takes my friend right to the Aldiko page on the Android Market.

But there's a lot more that you can do with Barcode-Scanner. A QR-Code can be used to convey virtually any text information, business cards, text-messages, I mean, you name it, and chances are, a QR-Code can convey it. You see them next to products at stores like BestBuy, for coupons in the weekly circular, on products that you buy, inventory in a warehouse, or on the outside of buildings (to bookmark in your phone for later, I guess?). Ever hear of Geo-caching? It's a game whee people use multi-billion dollar satellite technology to find buried plastic containers. Seriously. No kidding. Anyway, if that's your thing, you may have noticed that a lot of the caches have QR-Codes in them. Scan it, and your phone messages the person who placed the cache, allowing you to "confirm the find", thus giving you more bragging rights or points or something. I don't really know what you get, but that's how you get it.

[Google Shopper]: Google Shopper is very similar to Barcode-Scanner, the funcitonality is different. You can use both products to scan barcodes and QR-Codes, and Google those codes to look up, for instance, the UPC of a product, but with Google Shopper, it goes a step further (as far as the shopping aspect of it goes). Imagine that you're at a store and you're about to buy a product, say, a television. You scan the UPC barcode that's on the TV, and instantly, a Google Map of your location is displayed, with a little red dot over the store you're in, and the price the store is selling that TV for. But it also shows the location and price of that exact same TV for sale at other stores. So maybe it's ten or twenty or a hundred dollars cheaper across the street. Sounds pretty useful, doesn't it? Well, many stores price-match if you bring in an add showing a competitor with a cheaper price. Sometimes (and I really stress sometimes) showing the Google Shopper results to a sales associate is enough to get them to match the price!

In addition to scanning barcodes and QR-Codes, it will also scan product faces. It's advertised as being able to recognize the front of a book or CD, but i swear to God that I also got it to recognize a can of Pepsi! And of course, you can just search products with out scanning anything to help you find the cheapest prices and save some green.

[XiaaLive Lite]: If you're a geek, then you undoubtedly have your favorite audio streams that you listen to - music, news, police or airport scanners - whatever. XiaaLive lets you play pretty much any stream that can be listened to with WinAmp!

SORRY! NO LINK!

Okay, now for the really geeky stuff!

[WiGLE WiFi]: This app is a wardriving app! (Geeks know what wardriving is, and those who don't are advised to Google search "wardriving")  It will scan the WiFi networks in the local vacinity, as well as cell towers, log their security and signal strength, and attach to these entries a GPS or cellular network location to display on a map, and, at the user's request, upload this information to a database that all users can access to find other WiFi networks. It has a text-to-speech engine so that you can remain appraised of WiGLE WiFi's activity without taking your eyes off of the road.

I personally use WiGLE WiFi for security audits. I'll give you a great example: I was recently at a friend's house who had just had her WiFi network installed and set-up by her internet service provider. She wanted me to find out if it was secure. So, I fired up WiGLE WiFi, and was instantly aware of what encryption, if any, her WiFi was using. (I used these next two apps to do the rest of the checking)

Speed Test

[SpeedTest]: SpeedTest will perform a basic speed test, courtesy of speedtest.net. Are you getting the bandwidth that your internet service provider promised? This is one way to find out.

Network Discovery

[Network Discovery]: This little gem will scan every IP in the local subnet and, at the user's request, perform a port scan on the selected nodes. (Pretty self explanatory to geeks)

*NOTE I'm not including any browsers here because opinion varies widely, but you can use any one of them to perform a port scan on the gateway device, from the internet, via websites like www.t1shpper.com and www.yougetsignal.com, right from your Android device.

There's a few others I'd like to mention that aren't pure geek chic, but I find very useful.

[Gmote]: Allows remote control of a computer's media. Useful when watching Netflix on your laptop while in bed.

[DaraIRC]: It's an IRC client for your Android! There's a bunch, but geeks need at least one IRC client.

[eBuddy]: Combines AOL Instant Messenger, Facebook Messanger, MySpace Messenger, ICQ Messenger, Google Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger all in one app.

[Advanced Task Killer:]: Kills running apps to increase your phones performance and battery longevity.

[Angry Birds]: Did I mention Angry Birds? Angry Birds.

»Tony

P.S You can find all of these apps by either searching the Android Market on your Android Device or computer, or using your Android Device to scan the QR-Codes throughout this blog entry!

QR-Codes cutesy of http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ and http://www.qrstuff.com/

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