The Android NZ Apps of the Week (AOTW)

Here we go; our take on some great Android apps that are worth looking into. We'll be running this one weekly, with each editor contributing an app they can't live without. 


Jump past the break to check out our picks:



Andy Carruthers - gStrings (free)

gStrings Free (interesting name – careful if you're Googling it) chromatic tuner for Android is a must-have for the amateur and pro 'muso' alike. Far from being a cobbled together poor cousin of the beer-stained taped-together standalone device you have lurking about, this app uses your Android phone to great effect. So much so that the day I installed it into my Galaxy S, I permanently retired the original. It also has pride of place on my HTC Sensation.

Cleverly written to display state of tune as an analog needle position on a dial, it makes nailing perfect pitch (assuming your instrument's capable of such perfection), a doddle. Even less capable instruments can be sorted easily thanks to the needle-dampening wizardry gStrings Free boasts.

Pleasingly, the developer has enabled this gem to scale to whatever screen size and proportion your Android device possesses without pixellation or distortion. And while on the topic of its appearance, it's tasteful and clear to read - portrait or landscape orientation, and boasts 
seven skins to choose from.

There are settings for microphone sensitivity, the choice of six instruments to optimise for (from ukulele to double bass), three playback octave settings, orchestra tuning, more temperaments than you can shake a stick at, and even has a fix for the Xperia and Dell Streak sampling bugs.

Phew...

Hard to believe this miracle of modern musical metering can be free. But it is. And if I was able to award it, it would get five stars out of five. Dang it... five stars out of five it is. Oh, and if you want the version that's not ad-supported, it'll cost you a miserly NZ$1.81. A bargain.

Nick Monrad - ADW launcher Ex for Honeycomb ($3.95)

ADWLauncher EX has been around for a while and to be honest I never really used it when it was just for phones. Now that I have an Asus Transformer however, I found I needed something that was smoother and was more customisable than the stock Honeycomb Launcher.

After having a look around and finding that ADW Launcher Ex supported Honeycomb I swiftly laid down the $3.95 NZD that it costs on Android Market. Money well spent I must say.

Not only is the launcher buttery smooth but it has a huge number of customisation options and extra features that set it apart from the stock launcher.  From changing the animation when switching screens to changing the entire appearance with themes, if you want to do it ADW probably can.  For me the biggest feature is the dock bar that allows me to have easy access to a number of crucial apps without clogging up my homescreens with icons.

If you have an Android tablet running Honeycomb then I can strongly recommend that you get ADW Launcher EX

Anita Paling - Tweetdeck (Free)

Tweetdeck for Android works just like the desktop application. TweetDeck brings together Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and Foursquare all in one feed.

There’s so much more to describe but TweetDeck isn’t a complicated application.  Notifications can be set up for each column. There are three different widgets for your Android phone homescreen. 

What I wish TweetDeck did was make hash tags live. That way when you pressed the hash tag it would immediately search and provide the results. Other Twitter clients have this functionality and it’s very slick. I have tried other Twitter clients but find myself drawn back to TweetDeck. I like to see my social network information in one place and have the ability to update them all at once. 

1. Scroll through the feed and you’ll see the time each post was sent. Click the Home bar and you’ll be taken to the top of the feed and press again and TweetDeck will refresh.
2. You can swipe left and right. From the Home page a swipe to the left takes you to your Mentions. This is where someone has replied to a Facebook item you’ve commented on, or where your Twitter name has been used in a Tweet. Swipe to the left again and you’ll find yourself at the Direct Messages screen. Direct Messages are private Tweets between you and another person. If you have any new unread items in Mentions and Direct Messages the grey circles will show yellow.
3. Pressing this icon opens up a new window where you type your message. You can select to include the same message across Facebook, your various Twitter accounts, Buzz and Foursquare. Drag down the slide button to include more of your social networks. While you’re here you can paste URLs and shorten them, include other contacts add photos and share your location.
4. In TweetDeck you’re able to set up your favourite contacts. There are 12 spots to allocate as you wish. If you don’t have a contact selected you can type a name in the “lookup Twitter Profile” search bar. Selecting a contact will provide a summary of their Twitter profile and other interesting information, like how many Tweets they post per day, a list of their followers, who they follow and their favourite tweets. You also have access to add a column for that profile. Here you can also follow the contact, send a direct message or send a tweet mentioning the contact.
5. The plus button allows you to search, whether it is a Twitter name or a hash tag. Once the search is complete you can quickly add a column for that contact or hash tag. Each new column will show as a grey dot like you see in number 2.  You swipe to the left to move through the columns. And swipe to the right to reach the home screen. Removing columns is easy too.
6. 
   Pressing the Location button opens Google Maps. With GPS running your current location will be identified. Don’t forget you can add your location into the message screen and you can even search for a location.

While we're speaking Twitter, don't forget to follow @Android_NZ for all the latest updates from the team here!

Murray Winiata - Ubermusic ($4.51NZ)

One of the great strengths of the Android platform is the ability users have to replace any part of the stock UI with something that suits their needs better. 

Nearly every Android music lover at one time or another has gone looking for a replacement music player, so I thought I'd mention a great, but lesser known, option today (I actually thought it was a well known player, but so many people were asking about the music player in my 64GB micro SDXC video that I thought I should put it out there, just in case).

Ubermusic comes from Frederico Carnales, a quality developer better known for his replacement launcher Launcher Pro. What you get with Ubermusic is the slickest looking music player you can find for Android, especially once you install the free Metro skin. 

What you won't get is the most feature filled music player out there. There is LastFM integration, the ability to skin the player, change the highlight colours, select what action the player should take on headset detection and so forth, so it's not that its a slouch particularly, just that other players offer more.

The question of course is whether you need more. If you want features like equalisers, cross fading, and gapless playback, then PowerAMP is probably the player to look to (or perhaps the increasingly feature packed Player Pro). If a simple player is all you need then you can't really do better than this polished and silky smooth player from Frederico Carnales. 

...and that's a wrap for this week. Hopefully some of the recommendations here hit the spot. If they do, or for that matter if they don't, or you just plain think something else is better than what we've put out there today, get talking in the comments below.