This will be a loose series of blog posts presenting my favourite Android Apps. This selection is naturally quite subjective, but you might find some apps you don’t know yet. If root access is required, this is mentioned, as well as free vs. ad-supported vs. paid.

This second part is about apps for media – like music, pictures, ebooks etc.

SoundHound

Music identifier

This is by far the best application for identifying/recognizing music. It works better than the other well-known app and has a very friendly user interface. The recognition rate beats everything else on the market, even obscure dubstep b-sides and classical music is identified correctly.

Free, paid version available | Market link »

QuickPic

Very fast and capable image and video browser

This is a very good (and free) replacement for your built-in image/gallery browser. Not only it’s very fast – it also lets you edit your pictures and organize them.

• Very fast
• Plays videos
• Lets you organize your pictures and videos
• Basic editing features: rotate/crop/resize
• Plays a diashow
• Folders to include/exclude can be configured

Free | Market link »

PlayerPro

Deluxe media player

PlayerPro is first at all a media player. So it reads your media files (mp3/aac/wav/ogg etc.) and also plays videos. You can view your media by different criteria like genre, artist, album, playlist or folder. Besides the usual features like all kinds of playback options, shuffle and organizing your library it has some quite unique and useful features. It doesn’t only read the filenames but handles ID3-tags. Cover-art can be downloaded automatically if desired.
It can read tags from mp3-files, has useful widgets, a built-in equalizer with effects, a lock-screen interface and some other, quite unique features.

• Very stable
• Works with iSyncr (see below)
• Good integration via widgets and lockscreen interface
• Free skins can be downloaded
• Can be controlled by gestures

Paid, trial available | Market link »

MoonReader

The E-Book reader.

Free and very capable, reading is fun with this app. The UI is very good and configurable. The reading screen has very useful features like using gestures, volume and headset keys. Shaking the phone can be used to trigger text-to-speech. Swiping can be used to change the brightness.

• Reads nearly every imaginable format
• Continue where you left, bookmarks
• Looks very good, great UI
• Configurable reading view with very useful features
• Can access free online libraries (some built-in, more can be added)

Free | Market link »

iSyncr

Synchronize iTunes playlists, pictures and videos with PC/Mac via USB/WiFi

Great tool to synchronize your media (in iTunes) via USB or WiFi. Also has nice other features like: Automatically upload all new photos and/or videos to your computer, select playlist(s) to sync. And a very helpful and responsive developer.
Only downside is that the number of apps seems confusing: There’s iSyncr for PC, iSyncr Lite for PC, iSyncr for Mac, iSyncr Lite for Mac, iSyncr WiFi Add-On and iSyncr WiFi Lite Add-On… Simply use the lite version for mac or pc. If you’d like to use Wifi, use the Lite Add-On. If you are satisfied, use the non-lite version.

An alternative would be DoubleTwist – which features a nice player app also, but currently the Mac client is nearly unusable: It’s extremely slow and hangs often. According to their forums many people have these problems and until yet there’s no solution. As soon as the Mac client is improved, I’ll review it again.

• Did not once crash or do something strange, extremely stable (Mac version)
• Support for PlayerPro
• Fast and efficient syncing

Free and paid | Market link (Mac) » Market link (PC) »

The on- and offline protests against SOPA have at least delayed voting on SOPA/PIPA and – as it seems – stopped this legislation (read: lobbying) for the near future. Since I’m not American, putting up a banner and spreading the word about SOPA/PIPA were my means of protest against it.

But it continues..

Lobbying and corruption are of course a global threats. Some days ago the EU signed ACTA. The EU is of course a shameless euphemism, because it wasn’t the democratically elected European Parliament which signed it – it was the European Commission (plus presidency and states), which can be read as: Lobbyists signing their own treaty.

ACTA – what?

There are plenty of well-written explanations what ACTA is – see next paragaraph or this video (subtitles in several languages present):

What to do?

Also in this case there is hope: The final decision about ACTA lies at the European Parliament. So look here » and here » for more information and how to contact the responsible MEPs and how to take further action.

More information

Stop ACTA information
European Union Signs ACTA, But Future of Treaty in Doubt
European Parliament Official In Charge Of ACTA Quits, And Denounces The ‘Masquerade’ Behind ACTA
Google’s thank you for the protests against SOPA/PIPA

And since Coda 2 is said to be released in the near future I won’t add any new features until then. Therefore this version has some bugfixes only.

Click to download and/or comment »

This works via curl and is of course still very beta. The curl connection has a timeout and is being reloaded, so it should work with files that update continuously on the server.

Please note: The remote logfile should be text-only – html is not being rendered (and that would be very difficult).

Download:

http://www.chipwreck.de/blog/software/software-syslogviewer/

What’s new?

• There are now three toolbar buttons, two with a menu attached: Long click on the “Add to Pinboard” or “My Pinboard”-buttons now reveals a menu.
• It’s now possible to disable keyboard shortcuts.
• The selection of “Use https://” for pinboard is now being respected in all areas.
• Some fixes and code optimizations.
• Debug switch in the preferences – you can ignore this one.

What’s missing (but not forgotten :)?

I’m preparing the use of popovers (small windows popping up over the toolbar buttons) and the pinboard-API for more tasks. The problem with popovers is that they are Safari 5.1 only and the toolbar buttons must be visible, otherwise nothing happens. And that means a lot of additional code for some special cases. And that’s why all this takes a bit longer.

How to install?

Download here, double-click. Restart Safari after installing.

This will be a loose series of blog posts presenting my favourite Android Apps. This selection is naturally quite subjective, but you might find some apps you don’t know yet. If root access is required, this is mentioned, as well as free vs. ad-supported vs. paid.

Besides the usual stuff (works, doesn’t crash etc.), I like good UI design and of course a responsive developer, if that was necessary.

In the first part there are utilities – system tools, synchronization, file manangement and so on.

ES File Explorer

File management with a plethora of features

This is one of the most popular file managers, quite rightly. Besides the usual stuff (listing files, copy, move, delete and so one) the following features make it indispensable:

• Dropbox and Sugarsync access: You can browse your dropbox and upload/download files and folders, same goes for Sugarsync
• FTP and SFTP (!) support
• File transfer/browser via Bluetooth (very useful with Samsung phones and Mac, where you can’t browse the phone filesystem without additional tools)
• Integrated ZIP-Viewer and File-viewer
• For rooted phones: Root explorer
• App management (Uninstall many apps at once, list apps by installation date)

Free | Market link »

NoLED

Replacement for missing notification LED – useful for Samsung phones

If you missed a call, received SMS or email  - and the screen is turned off – you get a notification on the screen. The notification is configurable, either a coloured icon or (for missed calls and SMS) a contact photo with an icon. In order to save power the notification can be shown only every x seconds. The icon moves slowly across the screen to prevent burn-in.

Besides missed calls, SMS and emails the app also shows missed calendar events, 3rd party notifications for WhatsApp, Yahoo Mail, K9 Mail etc.

There settings are a bit overdone IMHO – too many options and possibilities.

Free | Market link »

Application Folder

Very pretty and easy application management

If you like your apps organized neatly and uncluttered like me, this should be your choice. The basic method is nothing special: Create folders, name them, put an icon to them and add apps to each folder. But what makes this app so much better than the rest are some very thought out features:

• If a new app is installed you see a notification in the status bar, click it, select the folder in which to put the app and you’re done (enable this in the settings). Additionally you find newly installed apps easily in the list.
• You can put apps in more than one folder
• To access your apps there are not only configurable widgets but also shortcuts, which need much less CPU
• Besides apps you can also store bookmarks and contacts in the same folder
• The developer is very friendly and responsive

If that wasn’t enough, the User Interface is very pretty and usable. Have a look.

Free with ads, adfree version available | Market link »

SMS Backup+

Backup SMS, MMS and call logs to Google Mail

There are many possibilities to backup your SMS, MMS and call logs, but this one is simply the smartest one: Your SMS and call logs are saved as “emails” to Google Mail, with a special tag so they won’t appear as unread or in your inbox.

You can even export your call log entries to the Google Calendar. And restore works flawlessly, I tried it.

Free | Market link »

Llama

Phone automation tool

This is an app you wouldn’t want to miss. Basically you can tell your phone to do something (or change settings) if an event happens or on entering or leaving a certain location (Area).

Areas are places like “home”, “work” etc. In order to let the app know about the location you put Llama into a learning mode – it tracks all mobile cells in the vicinity (much more power-saving than using GPS). When done Llama knows if you’re at home or at work for example.

Then you can set up profiles (like the profiles on usual mobile phones): Set volumes and ringtones and some more settings. So: If you enter your workplace the ringtone volume is lowered and email notifications are set to vibration, if you leave the settings are restored.

But really cool are events: An event consists of one or more conditions and a list of actions. A condition can be: Battery level < x%, Bluetooth device y connected, Leave area “home”, Enter area “work”, Screen turned off (and many more). Actions include: Bluetooth on/off, Set the volume for x to y, run an application, modify screen timeout and so one…

Some examples what you can do:

• Upon leaving work: Turn of WiFi, enable Bluetooth. Upon entering work: Disable Bluetooth, turn WiFi on
• When connected to AC power: Set screen timeout to 5 minutes
• On the weekend, between 6pm and 12am: Set the phone to vibration only

There are many more features than I can describe here. This sounds very complex but thanks to a very well designed user interface with helpful tips it’s easy to set up and easy to learn.

(There’s another app – Tasker – which can do this and much more. But Llama has more than enough features for most occasions and Tasker on the other hand is so complex that it’s nearly an own programming language. Market link for Tasker »)

Free | Market link »

Dropsync

Autosync dropbox by folder – must have for dropbox users

The official dropbox app for Android misses some important features: You can’t download complete folders and it has no synchronization included. To circumvent this limitation DropSync is by far the best tool: It allows you to link folders on your phone to folders in the dropbox and then syncs these in both directions.

Two-way synchronization often leads to problems, but not here. I use the app excessively and did not have one single problem yet.

You can sync automatically of course with useful restrictions: Sync only if WiFi is present, sync only if the battery has more than x% and (very good idea!) sync only if the phone is connected to AC/USB power.

Paid, trial version available | Market link »

Titanium Backup

Must have for rooted phones – full restore/backup

If you have read anything about rooting your phone or installing a custom ROM you’ll have heard that Titanium Backup is indispensable in this case. This app allows you to backup and restore all apps and their settings – not only the ones you installed, but also system/preinstalled apps. You can automatically schedule backups, upload them to your dropbox account, encrypt them if you like.

A great feature is “freeze”: This allows you to disable system apps, which often increases performance and saves battery. And you can check if you really need the preinstalled software on the phone and even delete it.

Since you can access system files and possibly render your phone completely unusable you should be careful and read the documentation.

(For non-rooted phones you can use ES File Explorer (see above) or App Backup, Market link »).

Paid, trial version available | ROOT required | Market link »

Something wrong? Anything else? Comments are welcome.

This is probably useful only to a few people – but if you are one of the mac users who bought a Razer BlackWidow keyboard (PC), this should be helpful. “BlackWidow” is a mechanical keyboard for a reasonable price, lightyears better than the default apple keyboard. It’s called a “gaming keyboard”, so after unpacking you’re official member of the “Cult of Razer” .. well, then.

PC vs. Mac edition confusion

The BlackWidow keyboard has a PC layout (which I’ll call “PC edition”). There is also a “Mac edition” – but it wasn’t available in Germany and costs about 50€ more than the standard edition, just for having USB ports and illuminated keys.

That’s where things get confusing aka annoying:

• There are OS X drivers from Razer, but only for the “Mac edition”
• According to the FAQ they absolutely don’t work with the “PC edition”
• But: The OS X drivers work flawlessly with the “PC edition”
• The firmware updater is only available as Windows software

Layout

This is a standard PC keyboard layout, so..

• Instead of option (alt) keys a “windows key” on the left and the “application key” on the right.
• To the right of the 12 function keys (F1-12) there are the typical 80s IBM keys: “Print”, “Scroll Lock” and “Pause/Break”
• Additionally there are 5 Macro keys (M1-M5) to the left and an FN-key at the bottom to modify volume, record macros – and

Setup in OS X

If you install the keyboard the first time, OS X asks you to press one key in order to identify the keyboard (For a German layout that’s the “<”-key) – now you can use the standard functions.

The next step is to open Keyboard settings in the control panel, click “modifier keys” and swap option and command key. I also disable Caps Lock here. Now you have control, alt and command keys like a mac keyboard – except the right “application key” doesn’t work.. We’ll fix this later.

Mapping “application key” to option

To fix the “application key” we have to do a little bit more. The best (and free) tool is: “KeyRemap4Macbook” (works with all Macs, the name is a bit misleading). Download here and install.

Now open the KeyRemap control panel, click on “Misc & Uninstall” and click “Open private.xml”. Now double-click the file “private.xml” and replace its contents with the xml below, save it and go back to the KeyRemap panel.

Then choose “Change Key”, click “Reload XML” and if you copied the XML correctly you see a new entry “Razer Win_key to Alt_R”.

As soon as you enable it, the “application key” now finally works as option key..

Special keys

• Volume and media keys work like labelled on the keys: FN + F1 toggles Mute, etc. If these don’t work, see below for a solution
• To access the shutdown menu (usually Control + Eject), you can use FN + F15 (“Sleep mode”), this works nicely.
• The Gaming Mode switch which disables the Windows and Application keys is of course completely useless on the mac.,

Razer drivers?

Now you could install the Mac drivers from razerzone.com – even if their FAQ states they don’t work. You get an application for remapping keys, creating macros and profiles. This works quite good.

But…

If you DON’T install the razer drivers, the function keys work perfectly – but the five macro keys are without function. The media keys (volume etc.) also don’t work out of the box, but this can be fixed with KeyRemap (see below). Even “macro recording on the fly” doesn’t work – for whatever reasons the driver needs to be installed..

If you DO install the razer drivers, you can use the macro recording function and the media keys (volume, track fwd. etc). But the disadvantage is that the function keys don’t work correctly… Until now it wasn’t possible for me to access F5, F6 and F7.

The driver can be uninstalled without problems, so you can try it out. And maybe, one day, Razer will support the “PC” keyboard at a Mac, who knows…

If you installed the Razer drivers: Macro & Function keys

The “Print”, “Scroll lock”..keys work as function keys (F13 – F15), so ignore the labels and you’ve got 15 some function keys, which can be mapped to Expose, Spaces etc. as you like. Until now I didn’t get all function keys to work.

But the M1-M5 macro keys also work as function keys (F13 – F17) – argh! To fix: Just assign a macro to each of the five keys (either via on-the-fly macro creation or with the Razer software) – and the macro keys work as they should.

BTW: The layout shown in the Razer app isn’t correct (of course, that would be too easy): F18 and F19 do not exist..

No Razer driver installed: Enabling media keys

With KeyRemap4Macbook it’s no problem to enable the media keys (FN+F1 Mute, FN+F2 Volume down etc.). This is only necessary if you didn’t install the Razer driver. Therefore you have to open the private.xml file like above and replace its contents with this XML:

That’s it for now

For using this keyboard in OS X this means either

… use it without drivers (Macros: NO, Special keys: MOST, Function keys: YES)
… or use it with the incompatible Mac drivers (Macros: YES, Special keys: YES, Function keys: ONLY SOME)

As soon as Razer improves its Mac support I’ll update this post (or if there are workarounds for the missing function).

Safari Pinboard extension

The most annoying bug (Can’t save tabsets) is fixed now, another strange candidate is still open: When adding a link the title of the previous page is used.. Happens currently only for one user but since this bug is completely improbable I really want to know if someone encounters similar problems. If so, please comment here.

Safari 5.1 has some new features for extension – you can open a popover window (on a button) now and do something else, which I seem to have forgotten. Nothing revolutionary, so I really have to think if it’s worth integrating these features – by having to maintain a fallback solution for Safari 5.0 users..

The next step will be to integrate more of the Pinboard API. This might include features like: Auto-tagging (applying always a given tag or according to a rule for new bookmarks), showing unread items in a Safari menu instead of opening the pinboard website, improving the search feature, doing more with tags etc.

Coda PHP plugin

There are two nice tools which might be worth integrating: PHP beautifier and CSS Lint. I’ll look if and how these tools make sense as addition/replacement for the currently used tools.

But more interesting is this question: What about Coda 2? Maybe the next version already includes PHP/HTML/CSS validation (Okay – HTML validation is somehow included in the current version, but it works only very limited..). So before looking at 348567 other tools I’d rather wait for 2.0 – a native integration into Coda would be by far the best solution. But currently only the developers from panic know more…

Explanation

„Pinch“ means using 2 fingers to zoom in our out (Google this if you don’t know the word). The buttons are depicted here:

User interface

• Scrolling:
  - Use two fingers to scroll until fingers are released.
  - Use three fingers to scroll fast until top/bottom.
• Phone wake up: Via home or power.
• Hold menu: Quick access Android search.
• Double click home: Quick access voice commands.
• Screenshot: Press home and power simultaneously. Screenshots are saved in /sdcard/ScreenCapture/

Home screen

• Multiple home screens: Touch the dots to switch directly to a screen or hold and drag left/right to scroll very fast.
• Changing shortcuts at the bottom: Click „Applications“ (bottom right), then menu, click „Edit“: Now change the three (left) icons via drag & drop. Afterwards click menu and choose „Save..“.
• Quick brightness change: Hold the notification bar (on the top) and drag left/right to modify brightness (if not set to auto).
• Quick view current date: Hold the notification bar (on the top).
• Pinch home screen to view all home screens and add/delete them.
• Pinch application screen to view all application screens and reoder them.
• Set background image for lock screen: When changing your desktop background image, there are two buttons, choose the right one (smaller area) and save. Now you‘ll be asked to use this image for the lockscreen too.

Android Apps

• E-Mail: Pinch in the overview list to fold/unfold by date.
• E-Mail: Click longer on a date (either the sent date or a date in the email text): Create a new calendar event for this date.
• Contacts: Drag left over a contact to send SMS, drag right to call.
• Keypad: Use the letters on number keys to type a name, the triangle on the right shows how many matching contacts are found, clicking on it reveals them.
• Camera: Change shortcut buttons by clicking menu, “Edit”, then modify shortcut buttons via drag&drop. You can configure shortcuts for picture and video mode independently.
• Camera: Pinch to zoom in/out.
• Browser: Pinch to view all tabs/windows.
• Browser: Go to “about:debug” via address bar. Now you have additional options when pressing the menu (at the bottom)
• Browser: Go to “about:useragent” via address bar. Now you can modify the user agent string.
• Video player: Drag left/right to Fast forward/Rewind.
• Video player: Power locks/unlocks the screen.
• Calendar: Pinch in month view to get an overview, swipe left/right to change the year.
• Settings: Open Settings/About Phone/Battery Use and click on the graph at the top to zoom and view more details in a timeline.
• Easter egg from Google: Go to preferences, about phone, click some times on “Android Version” (try multiple times)

(Forum link: Feature discoveries – xda-developers)

Miscellaneous hints

• If you get an error when trying to uninstall an app: Did you assign the app as “Device Admin”? If so, you have to remove this before uninstalling (Settings/Location and Security/Device Admin).
• Samsung offers a free service to track and control a lost or stolen mobile: Enable “Remote Access” in Settings/Location and Security. Then login at www.samsungdive.com (with your Samsung account data) to locate and remote control your phone.

Factory reset (Everything will be deleted!)

Via these three ways:

• Turn phone off, press and hold: volume Up + home + power. Use volume keys to navigate up/down, home to execute.
• In the phone keypad: Enter *2767*3855#
• Menu: Settings > Privacy > Factory data reset.

Codes (enter via phone keypad, the ones below work for me)

CwComplete page here »

CwComplete at Mootools Forge »

Note: Of course this is not the only way – you can also use iSync (if your phone is supported, mine currently isn’t), software from your phone manufacturer or other solutions (see the links at the end).

This post is of course not complete, I’ll update it as soon as I discover more.

Latest Changes:

• 16. Jul: Added: Prices for alternative solutions, Sync Media section

Google Account

The most easy way is (of course) using a Google Account. So the first step is to set up an account at Google (if you don’t have one already) and enable Google Mail and Calendar.

Sync Address Book / Contacts

This is quite straight forward: Open Address Book, go to Settings, Accounts and then enable “Synchronize with Google”, afterwards enter your Google credentials. This will sync your contacts between Google Mail and the Address Book. You can view your contacts on the Google side when opening Google Mail and clicking “Contacts” on the left side.

Drawback here: Birthdays, URLs and the company division are currently not being synced. I don’t know a workaround now, except entering those values manually into Google Contacts.

Sync iCal

This is also quite easy: Open iCal Preferences, click the Accounts tab and click the “+” to create a new account. Then choose “Google” as type, enter your credentials and finish.

Multiple Calendars

Controlling the synchronization of more than one calendar is also possible, therefore open iCal, Settings, Accounts and choose the Google Account. Now click on “Delegation”. There you can select the calendars individually.

If you have entered birthdays into Google contacts, you can add a birthday calendar in Google: Open Google calendar settings, select the Calendars tab, click on “Browse public calendars” and add the calendar “Contacts’ birthdays and events”.

You can also add holidays: To view a list of public calendars, click “Add” at the bottom of the calendar list on the left and choose “Browse Interesting Calendars”.

The Contacts’ birthdays and Holidays calendar will appear in the “Delegation” tab also.

Using Bluetooth

This depends a lot on your device. The Samsung SII by default is detected as bluetooth device, but supports only data transfer: You can send files via BT to the phone, that’s it. But there’s a freeware for Android to enable full bluetooth integration: Bluetooth File Transfer (Android Market Link).

Start Bluetooth File Transfer on your phone, enable Bluetooth and make it discoverable (you can do this in the settings from Bluetooth File Transfer). Then add the phone (or reconfigure) it on the Mac to enable all bluetooth services.

Set up Bluetooth File Transfer

Sync Music, Photos, Videos

Synchronization of your media is possible with lots of different tools, this depends on your personal workflow. A good one is DoubleTwist AirSync, which is free (USB sync version, via WiFi € 3,99).

Dropbox integration

There’s a free dropbox app for Android: Market Link. The app is very stable and allows you to upload and download files, add photos and videos, edit documents inside dropbox and lets you share folders.

1Password integration

Also free: A very good app for 1Password – Market Link. It’s not yet the final version, but it allows you to access all login data and accounts. The data can be synchronized automatically.

Missing things & Conclusion

Of course Android is not iOS, but the integration is nevertheless quite flawless and easy, the high quality (and free) apps do a very good job.

What is missing? For me only one thing: OmniFocus. You can use Google Tasks as a replacement, but that’s of course not to compare with OmniFocus.

Links

• http://www.google.com/sync/mac.html
• http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=37098

Alternative software solutions

• Missing Sync ($39.95)
• SyncMate ($39.95)
• FoneSync (9,99€)