A lot of sites and blogs have RSS (or "news") feeds. This is a special web page on the site that allows the site content to be easily shared or viewed by a variety of means. Pulse is an app that allows you to "subscribe" to these feeds on your android device and presents them to you in a very clever way.
The latest version of the Pulse app allows you to store up 60 rss feeds that can be organized into 5 columns in a similar set up to tweetDeck. Once in a column, each feed gets its own row of horizontally scrollable thumbnails. Each thumbnail is a news posting from that rss source. Pressing the thumbnail opens the article. Swiping left or right while in the article will navigate you to the next or previous content. It's really a great alternative to browsing websites on the droid because the content is optimized to be read on your smaller screen. Clicking on links within the article usually opens in your browser.
The setup is easy and has a nice index of popular news sources or you can search or provide your own feed if you know the source's web address. Organizing is done with simple long-presses to allow drag and drop.
To be honest, 90% of what I do on my droid is either through TweetDeck or Pulse ... occasionally I make a phone call.
I use Twitter to post updates Facebook sometimes. However a few months ago, the link between the two stopped working and I had to post separately to both services. Which I hated to do.
I then discovered TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a FREE app that is essentially a "social networking dashboard" for Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and Foursqaure. You can even add multiple accounts (In case you have another twitter account like "@BronxZosoCobra" ). The main reason I installed it is that it allowed you to simultaneously post to ANY of the services you set up in the app.
The app is built around "columns". Each service gets its own column which generates a long stream of posts/updates/twitters/etc. Clicking on the post brings you to the full posting with options to re-tweet, comment or other functions (depending on what service your looking at). Swiping left or right, switches columns.
For my phone, the 1st column is a big mashup of everyone I'm friends with on FB and everyone I'm following on Twitter. They are color coded so you tell where the update came from. The 2nd column are FB notifications. 3rd are Twitter direct messages and I've set up a 4th column to stream a #hash tag search form Twtter (#browns ... so sue me).
I find this app a lot faster and easier to use than the actual Facebook or Twitter app (I don't use foursqaure). I can catch up on a ton of activity in seconds and quickly write responses or comments.
Are you talking on the phone and need your calculator real quick?
Have you ever wanted to quickly launch your camera but your music player is on?
Here is is an app that allows you to specify up to 12 of your favorite or most used apps and with a swipe from the edge of your droid, will show them allowing you to launch any app you have set up on swipPad.
Once installed, all you do is pick your apps and then set up what your "swipe" will be. I have mine set up to be the entire right edge. I just swipe from the right outside edge (kind of like how you bring down the top status bar) and it overlays a page of icons over whatever your doing.
There are other apps similar to this one, but most of those place a tiny persistent icon that shows no matter what your doing and others are resource hogs.
I love this app, it's light weight and won't bog down your phone and with 12 slots, there is more than enough room to hold your most useful apps.
I just downloaded "Blogger" from the android market and within seconds I am able to login and create this posting. The secret is: Google owns Blogger and my android credentials automatically logged me in.
LiveHome is a "Launcher" or "home replacement" ... a launcher is essentially a "desktop application" for your android phone. This is where you can have 3 or more screens upon which you can place your shortcuts, folders and widgets. They also can affect the "dock" which is the bottom part of your screen where you launch your application drawer and can have a few shortcuts of its own.
I've used a few different launchers since I got my droid a year ago, but recently I have been using "LiveHome" ... it is a fast stable launcher with a LOT of customizations. It also has some nice page transitions and gesture actions (swipe up/swipe down) and screen rotation support.
LiveHome also supports several different theme and icon packages from OTHER pay "launchers" (aHome, panadaHome and openHome themes).
I've rated it 4 out of 5 starts on the android market.
I've been following several other tech sites that specialize in android phones. Some of them do app reviews but but not often enough. Here, I will try to write about 1 app a day. Luckily, the android OS has plenty of apps to talk about.
