Can Your Android's Compass Be Used to Receive Data?

NFC is "the next big thing" and you're probably sick of hearing about it because, unless you have a Nexus S, you probably don't have any NFC bells and whistles. 

But we're Android users, a little thing like missing hardware isn't enough to stop people like us! So what can we do? One guy decided to rework his electronic compass into a low-bandwidth, read-only, "poor man's NFC". It's not really NFC, it's simply an Arduino microcontroller, a bit of custom code to drive the Arduino and a custom app on the Android to read the data. That said, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to imagine an NFC reader that transmitted the read data to the Android using a method similar to this. 

Useful? Probably not. Fun? Absolutely! 




Source: Joe Desbonnet's web log

With Google's recent announcement of Google Wallet and other fun goodies using NFC, they got our collective hope up -- only for us to realize that owners of the Nexus S and new phones with NFC built in will be able to take advantage of all the NFC fun, and not the rest of us. To get around that a Chinese company called Netcom (no relation to the Norwegian carrier with the same name) has put together a microsd card with NFC built in. Much like the EyeFi card (which combines Wi-Fi and flash storage), this card will combine an NFC chip and antenna with a flash memory card. Sounds great, right? Before you pull out your wallet, there are some restrictions. Your smartphone's back cover can't have any metal in it, nor can the microsd slot be made of metal. Since the antenna is tiny, scanning is reportedly "tricky" -- especially if the reader has a small sensing area. The phone needs a special app running in the background to communicate with the NFC circuitry. Lastly, the device hasn't been released yet, so even if you wanted to, you couldn't buy it. None of those restrictions makes it any less cool! Source: Engadget

The Android Gallery is the app that most Android-powered smartphones use to display photos and videos. Unfortunately it also picks up other folders that contain images -- not necessarily photos. For example, I use LauncherPro as my launcher app, which allows me to set a custom background image behind the dock. These images show up in my Gallery alongside pictures of my family and friends. It's not a problem, it's just annoying to have to sort through all those non-photo images every time I'm looking for a picture. 

To remedy the situation you can place a .nomedia file inside each folder that you want to exclude from the Gallery. While not terribly difficult, doing so is not as easy as it sounds. Luckily we've got creative developers writing apps for us, and, yes, there is an application to help us out! 

Gallery Excluder lists the folders on your sdcard and allows you to place a check mark next to folders that you want to exclude, and vice versa. The app is simple and does exactly what it's supposed to -- most of the time. Some phones, particularly those from Motorola, do things differently and the .nomedia trick doesn't work. 

In any case, it's got a place on my phone, and if you've got images that you don't want in your Gallery I suspect the app will have a permanent home on your phone, too! 


Download from the Android Market

The Android Gallery is the app that most Android-powered smartphones use to display photos and videos. Unfortunately it also picks up other folders that contain images -- not necessarily photos. For example, I use LauncherPro as my launcher app, which allows me to set a custom background image behind the dock. These images show up in my Gallery alongside pictures of my family and friends. It's not a problem, it's just annoying to have to sort through all those non-photo images every time I'm looking for a picture. To remedy the situation you can place a .nomedia file inside each folder that you want to exclude from the Gallery. While not terribly difficult, doing so is not as easy as it sounds. Luckily we've got creative developers writing apps for us, and, yes, there is an application to help us out! Gallery Excluder lists the folders on your sdcard and allows you to place a check mark next to folders that you want to exclude, and vice versa. The app is simple and does exactly what it's supposed to -- most of the time. Some phones, particularly those from Motorola, do things differently and the .nomedia trick doesn't work. In any case, it's got a place on my phone, and if you've got images that you don't want in your Gallery I suspect the app will have a permanent home on your phone, too! Download from the Android Market

If you're like me, you've got way too many apps installed on your Android-powered smartphone. Although it's relatively easy to uninstall an app, it's a bit more time consuming and has far more steps than should be necessary. Multiply that by a few dozen apps and it's a pretty powerful disincentive for even the most organized among us! 

Wouldn't it be nice if you could bulk-remove all the apps that you never use anymore? That's exactly what one developer thought, and he did something about it! 

Silent App Uninstaller displays a list of apps that you have installed and lets you select which apps you want to backup, or which apps you want to remove. The removal process is super easy: check the box next to any apps you want to get rid of, tap the delete button, and let the app go to work. 

Other apps exist that do the same thing, but most make you repeated hit the "confirm" button to tell the OS that you're really serious about the removal of each app. That's not the case with Silent App Uninstaller. 

There is a drawback: this kind of power requires that you have rooted your phone and pass those permissions on to the app. In my opinion, it's well worth rooting your phone just for this one app. Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments below! 

Silent App Uninstaller ROOT 

NEW

by Geek Software Technology Inc.

500 downloads, 5 ratings (4.4 avg)

Free

Install

Download from the Android Market

Hands on with SwiftKey X Beta for Android (Video)

SwiftKey X Beta is a replacement soft-keyboard for your Android-powered smartphone. It's got a few bells and whistles over traditional input methods, but in the end, it's still a keyboard. That is, until you look at its real power. 

SwiftKey X figures that your writing style is pretty much the same and can use what you've written in the past as a predictive method in the future. Sounds fair enough, right? But where can SwiftKey X get information about what you've written in the past? Sure, you could use it for a few weeks and it could "learn" your style, but that would take a while. To get over that hurdle, SwiftKey X does something really interesting -- and a little scary: with your permission, they poll what you've written on Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, and SMS to create a profile for you. 




I was able to save 55% by using SwiftKey X over my traditional soft-keyboard. You're mileage may vary. The concept is cool. The app is still beta (and has some kinks to be worked out), but if you can get past the fact that it will know everything you've posted everywhere bit, and once it's out of beta, I think you'll be very impressed with SwiftKey X! 

SwiftKey X Beta (Phone) 

NEW

by TouchType Ltd

50,000 downloads, 1749 ratings (4.4 avg)

Free

Install

Download from the Android Market 

No NFC On Your Phone? How About an NFC sdcard?

With Google's recent announcement of Google Wallet and other fun goodies using NFC, they got our collective hope up -- only for us to realize that owners of the Nexus S and new phones with NFC built in will be able to take advantage of all the NFC fun, and not the rest of us. 

To get around that a Chinese company called Netcom (no relation to the Norwegian carrier with the same name) has put together a microsd card with NFC built in. Much like the EyeFi card (which combines Wi-Fi and flash storage), this card will combine an NFC chip and antenna with a flash memory card. Sounds great, right? 

Before you pull out your wallet, there are some restrictions. Your smartphone's back cover can't have any metal in it, nor can the microsd slot be made of metal. Since the antenna is tiny, scanning is reportedly "tricky" -- especially if the reader has a small sensing area. The phone needs a special app running in the background to communicate with the NFC circuitry. Lastly, the device hasn't been released yet, so even if you wanted to, you couldn't buy it. 

None of those restrictions makes it any less cool! 

Source: Engadget