Posted by Kyle Dornblaser in App Of The Week | 0 Comments

App of the Week – imo

Starting next week there will be Honeycomb optimized apps for App of the Week. This does not mean that there will be no more apps that work on the Original Galaxy Tab, but there will be some Honeycomb 3.x apps. This is just a fair warning.

So this weeks app is imo, an instant messaging client for several of the most popular messaging services. These services are Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Skype, MSN, ICQ/AIM, Yahoo, Jabber, and Myspace.

You do not even need to sign up for an account in order to start messaging. Just sign into your service or services of choice and get messaging.

This app has the ability to send multimedia attachments and voice instant messages. It can be downloaded for free today!

Download: Market Link

Posted by Kyle Dornblaser in App Of The Week | 1 Comment

App of the Week – Plants vs Zombies

Plants vs Zombies has been a long awaited addition to the Android Market, but it is not quite available just yet through that channel. Instead Amazon scored exclusive rights (at least for now) to it. It runs for $2.99 but is currently on sale for $1.49.

The objective in Plants vs Zombies is to defend your home from a zombie attack using… plants. These are not ordinary plants though because they can shoot at the zombies.

Generally the plants can only shoot down their respective row, but different plants have different abilities like shooting down three rows at once.

The game is easily worth $2.99 so pick it up while it is on sale!

Since it is just over 70 MB, you are required to download it over Wi-Fi, but that is not a big deal.

Download from Amazon App Store

Posted by Kyle Dornblaser in App Of The Week | 0 Comments

App of the Week – Flight Control

This week for App of the Week, we are featuring Flight Control. Flight Control is a simple, addictive, and challenging game. You are in charge of directing planes in an airfield and have to guide the planes, jets, and helicopters to their runways safely without any collisions.

The game includes five different airfields to navigate ten different types of aircraft. Each map will hold its own challenges and it you will try to beat your high score again and again!

It will cost you $2.99, but it will certainly pass some free time and is better quality than all the free games available on the Android Market. And if you do not like it, then delete it within 15 minutes and you will get a full refund.

Download Flight Control ($2.99)

Posted by Kyle Dornblaser in App Of The Week | 0 Comments

App of the Week – LauncherPro

While some aspects of TouchWiz are nice, they leave a good bit to be desired. This is why developer have created dozens (if not hundreds) of Home Screen Replacements/Launchers. The clear front-runner is LauncherPro.

LauncherPro comes in two versions – LauncherPro and LauncherPro Plus. The first is free and the second will cost you $3.49. The most notable difference between the two is the inclusion of LauncherPro widgets. These widgets can do things like display your Emails, Calendar, Twitter Feed, Facebook Feed and more. If you do not see the need for these widgets, then by all means stick with the free version.

As soon as you open up the application you will notice a difference. The screen is only 4×4 instead of the slightly larger one found in the TouchWiz Launcher. You can change this in the preferences to up to 10×10. The largest grid is not always best, especially on the original Galaxy Tab’s screen which will cause all the icons to overlap drastically.

Another notable feature is transitions. There are several to choose from in the preferences that animate the home screens when you switch between them.

I think the coolest aspect of LauncherPro is the ability to resize your widgets, but it is only available in LauncherPro Plus. To resize a widget longpress on it and it will be outlined. Then just drag to the dimensions you desire. This has been a long awaited feature in the core Android OS that Google only recently announced. Unfortunately it is only available in 3.1 and does not support most widgets (yet).

Download LauncherPro
Download LauncherPro Plus Unlocker ($3.49)

Posted by Kyle Dornblaser in App Of The Week | 0 Comments

App of the Week – FlexT9

Samsung’s default keyboard has always served me well. I was also happy that the innovative keyboard Swype was also included on the Galaxy Tab. Neither of them were entirely perfect. The Android Market has dozens of quality keyboards, but FlexT9 won my heart.

It is a hybrid keyboard bringing all the best ways to input text into your Galaxy Tab – speak, trace, write, and tap.

The speech-to-text component is powered by Dragon Dictation, an extraordinarily powerful piece of software. A few tests proved that it is as good, if not better than the pre-installed Google speech-to-text application.

Tracing was first made widespread by Swype a few years ago. It was revolutionary and even broke the world record for fastest text input. It never seemed that robust to me though. There were way too many errors and it just felt buggy to me. FlexT9 handles tracing like a champ though. A few errors here and there, but great all around.

Writing is the slowest and least practical method packaged in the keyboard. To use it you must draw out each individual letter. The OCR software is top-notch, but it is just a very slow way to input text.

Last is tapping. This is the classic way to enter text on a touchscreen phone, via an onscreen keyboard. This is my second most used option on the keyboard after tracing. Of course it handles tapping phenomenally.

All this good comes at a price though. I was lucky enough to get it for free on Amazon’s free app of the day. Now it will cost you $4.99.

Download: Android Market

(beware of horrendous music)

Posted by Kyle Dornblaser in App Of The Week, Featured | 0 Comments

App of the Week – Pulse News

Pulse News is the single greatest RSS Reader app available for Android. Of course you could use the Google Reader app, but it does not have the same appeal. Besides you can import your Google Reader feeds into Pulse News.

Each feed is separated into rows and shows the latest items on each. If there is a thumbnail available it will be displayed with the title of the post on top of it.

If widgets are your thing, then you will be happy to learn that Pulse News features a large and small widget that will show a single feed on your desktop.

Go ahead and give it a download.

Download: Android Market