The Android NZ Apps of the Week 14/11/2011 [AOTW]

Wow, I am so snowed under with content I need to be producing it's insane - I'll barely have time to finish my Galaxy Note review before the Galaxy Nexus arrives!

Some things are important though, you just make the time. Things like posting up our editors hand-picked app recommendations, for example. 

To see what made our list this week, just make a wee jump over the break. You'll be glad you made the time.

Nik Turner – Not Always Right (Free & ad supported/Paid $0.99US)

To make a change from my past posts on utilities, I thought I’d branch out into something a little less practical this week. (The Customer Is) Not Always Right is the official app from a site that I’ve found worthy of a chuckle or two on many an occasion, as have many in customer-facing industries. The parent site http://notalwaysright.com/ functions similarly to the likes of http://bash.org or http://qdb.us, in that its content is entirely user-submitted. In this case, the content consists of employees’ experiences with crazy customers from around the world, with a surprising number of them coming from little ol’ New Zealand. From the embarrassing to the ignorant to the outright silly, they’re a great way to cool off after a rough day if you’re unlucky enough to earn your crusts in a service industry, or even to extend those bathroom breaks at the office (Not that we’d ever condone such a thing, of course).

The app itself is pretty basic, with a scrolling list of the latest stories, and a menu-press is required to switch to the next page, or to access the top-rated, . Once you’ve been using it for a while, you’ll probably appreciate the random story feature, as it’s good for a quick belly laff. Also included is the ability to submit your own undoubtedly-hilarious stories, so it’s one of them fandangled apps for the so-called prosumer audience, i.e. you’re not just a passive couch/desk potato chortling away at herpy-derpy people, and can actually contribute.

My use of the app does generally revolve around flicking it open on a coffee break, checking for new stories, and failing those, hitting the refresh button on the random story page a few times. It’s a time waster, not a time saver - but let’s be honest, so many functions of our little pocket computers are about filling up those empty pockets of time we find ourselves in on a daily basis. You could certainly fill that time with worse things than amusing stories of customer experience gone wrong, and that’s why Not Always Right is my App of the Week.

Anita Paling - Christmas HD ($1.99NZ)

This is me new favourite app. It's also my very first Live Wallpaper on my phone.

Who doesn't love Christmas?  No, don't Bah humbug!  Christmas if full of joy and promise and children squealing with excitement and a chance to eat way too much and not feel guilty about it.

I love Christmas.

But back to my pick for this week.

I read about this app on Saturday morning and wasn't at all put off by the small price of NZ$1.99.  I must have it I thought.  It's way cool!

Almost every part of this wallpaper is customisable.  Right down to picking the type of gift wrapping, and the bow. You can pick colours for the lights on the trees, the coloured decorations, whether you want tinsel or beads. You can choose to have candles on the mantel piece and at the window (which you can't see from my screen capture).  Then there's the names on the stocking.  The middle name ends up in a note to Santa (if you want to show it) and you can pick if the note says you've been naughty or nice. Nice of course! You can choose from two different types of snowflakes. Do you want to see that countdown calendar?  What about having a photo over the fire place.  That's my cats in case you're wondering. Right down to whether or not the photo should have a frame.

But the fun doesn't stop there because the wallpaper is interactive. You can touch the tree ornaments and they'll jiggle. Touch the fire place (watch how you explain that to small children when you've been convincing them it's hot!) and the flames will enrage.  There's more frost on the windows too if you touch those.

I feel like I'm about as excited about this little live wallpaper as the boys are about their games.

In case you feel like you want to see all this goodness in action, and not quite sure just how to configure all the details,  watch the video which SmartKeitai has created.  It will give you the low down.

Basically, if you love Christmas, then this app is a must have.  It's so much fun!

PS this image was taken on on my ASUS eee Pad Transformer. I've also got this on my Samsung Galaxy S2.  You can't get too much of a good thing.

Gianpy Belaunde - BLN control (Free, Pro $3.49NZ)

One of the major disadvantages of being a Nexus S user is the lack of a notification LED. I'm not usually a person that gets massive amounts of email or messages, but I still like to be notified when one has come through. For this reason, I was jealous of BlackBerry devices for quite a bit of time. Looking to resolve this issue, I search around the web and came across BLN (Backlight notification) control.

This app does 1 task and does it well - it simply turns the capacitive buttons on your device into a notification LED. When you receive a tweet, message or alarm - the keys will turn on and stay on, letting you know that some kind of notification has been received with the visual alert.

For the Pro version, you have the option of allowing the lights to blink, which produces a more noticeable and eye-catching effect. Unfortunately, the app is only available for a small selection of phones, which are basically the Google Nexus S and all variants of the Samsung Galaxy S [and S II, Ed]. 

Getting the app on your device is a little more difficult than simply downloading it and installing it, a kernel with a BLN mod is necessary to run the app, so you must be rooted and have the kernel installed onto a rom. 

The free version should get the job done for most people, but for those that want some more options available, the paid version is available for $2.89. 

The app has come in greatly handy in situations where I can't use sound notifications to let me know if I received a message (such as in a meeting), the simple lighting up of my buttons lets me know something is waiting for me. If you feel similar to how I used to feel and have a supported phone, you gotta try this one out!

Nick Monrad - Zedge Ringtones and Wallpapers (Free)

Zedge is a content portal app that offers access to an insanely large library of wallpapers, ringtones and notification tones for your Android devices.  Right now on my SGSII it provides access to over 50K wallpapers, 500k ringtones and 78k notification sounds.  With such a lot of content it could be quite easy to get lost in it all. Thankfully you can search by keyword, browse by category and sort by a number of other criteria to find the content that you want.

Once you find something you like you can then download with one press and then set it with a second. It’s super simple.  It also has a great little feature that allows you to automatically update your wallpaper every hour, 12 hours or once a day.

If you’re the type of person that likes to change their wallpaper or ringtone frequently then Zedge is a godsend and you should go download it now!

Murray Winiata - gReader Pro ($6.99NZ Pro version, Freemium ad-supported version also available)

Apologies all, I really cannot stop
myself annotating everything I
capture on the Galaxy Note!

If there is one thing I can’t do without, it’s a great RSS reader. A while back another RSS fiend and I were talking about our mutual love for RSS readers, so naturally we took a look at each other’s weapon of news readership choice (with a view to affirming the superiority of our own selection, of course). Sadly it was not my turn to be vindicated however, and gReader Pro easily trumped NewsRoom - an app I had been using happily for some time by that point I might add!

So, what are the things that sold me so quickly on gReader Pro?

Firstly, it has Google Reader 2-way sync. That’s a biggy right there. Even if you’re not a Google Reader user presently I think you can probably appreciate how much easier it is to find and add feeds on your PC.

Secondly it has a much more granular level of control over what kinds of content it downloads – from everything including images for offline reading, to mere stubs of articles. Great flexibility to match your needs. On WiFI at the airport pre-flight? Grab everything! Running close to your mobile data limit? Get stubs!

Futhermore it has an excellent list view, a curious omission from several RSS readers out there (including my now-jilted former RSS love, NewsRoom). There are several ways of viewing your information on offer, and while the list view isn’t the best looking out there, it is certainly the most functional – something you’ll appreciate when your feed counts start to climb and you want to quickly weed out the chaff. Once you have sorted the good stuff, you will of course want ways to organise it, and gReader has your back there too with ready access to favourite/read/unread/save and so on.

Being an Android app it goes without saying that it has excellent sharing options, but it goes beyond the usual Android sharing dialogue, and has it’s own mechanisms for sharing to services like Read it Later and Instapaper – a boon since you can share to your other screens without needing additional apps on the phone.

...and it might only be a small thing, but it has a dark theme, which I just love on my AMOLED screens for it’s aesthetics and power-saving.

I could keep going on about gReader Pro and why I love it so much, but really if you’re an RSS fiend you should just do yourself a favour and get it now. Sure, there are others that look purtier, but if you’re anything more than a casual RSS user then you really functionality and usability to win out (and hey, it’s not as if gReader Pro is actually bad looking or anything, only that looks are not it’s primary concern like other prominent RSS apps out there).