Here are my top 5 android applications and widgets (two separate lists).  In an effort to spread the word about some lesser-known power-user apps, I will try to exclude everyone’s favorites, such as RememberTheMilk and WeatherBug.

Applications

1 Handcent

Handcent is a replacement for the stock “Messaging” application on Android.  It literally has too many feature to list, but some of my favorites:

• Can customize notification options on a per contact basis, and even set custom vibrate settings
• Can skin to your hearts content
• Can reply inline to incoming text messages
• Can quick-compose a text message from within ANY android application

2 SayMyName

SayMyName is a nice little random utility that will speak the name of the incoming caller when receiving a new phone call.  It is overlaid with the ringtone that is being played, but in my experience that is not much of a problem.  You can have it just say the persons name, or configure what it says, such as “Incoming Call from %first% %last%”.

3 Gentle Alarm

GentleAlarm is a sort-of a replacement for the Clock application.  In my opinion the stock Clock application is severely lacking in the alarm feature, coming from using an iPhone as a dedicated alarm clock for almost two years.

Once you get past GentleAlarm’s rather HORRIBLE user experience, it is easily the best alarm application I have ever used.

• dock support
• sleep-cycle optimized to you wake up during light sleep (optional)
• music, playlists, ringtones
• silent alarm for school/work
• very smooth onset of alarm
• night display
• flip to snooze
• optional flightmode at night

4 KeePassDroid

I use KeePassX on my Macbook Pro to track all of my important account information.  KeePassDroid allows me to carry that information with me everywhere on my phone.  Definably a must for me and my smart phone.

5 twicca

I really don’t spend much time using Twitter anymore, but twicca seems to be the best currently available twitter app for Android.  It looks great, and covers all of the basic features perfectly.

Widgets

1 Agenda Widget

The stock “Calendar” widget that comes with Android sucks.  What I needed was an agenda style widget that doesn’t look like crap.  “Agenda Widget” fits the bill rather perfectly.

2 Power Control Widget (root required)

A widget that gives you quick access to toggling bluetooth/wifi/3g, comes with a rooted ROM.

3 Battery Time Lite Widget

This widget gives you a little battery icon showing remaining juice, but it also places the battery percentage into your notification bar.

I have been using an iPhone 3G for a little over two years, and a year before that I was using a first generation iPod Touch. For those 3 years the iPhone (and its operating system) has been my handy companion, helping to keep me entertained, and on track with every aspect of my life. It _was_ the ultimate smart phone.

I have spent many years using various Palm PDAs and they always left me felt wanting – I didn’t know what I wanted, but the iPhone filled that spot perfectly.

I have been completely satisfied until recently, and this week signed up for a new 2 year verizon wireless contract, and bought a Motorola Droid.

What led me to do this?
- iPhone 3G was becoming increasingly slow. (Jailbroken or not). In an effort to speed it up, I restored it to stock firmware and lost 90% of the functionality that is important to me in a smart phone. iPhone 3G stock is useless to me.
- AT&T reception. Where I work, and spend most of my weekends, AT&T reception is poor at best. In most cases it would be faster to go to an Apple Store, buy an iMac, then hand carry that iMac to a starbucks to check my email then wait for the iPhone to find service and launch the email application.
- Boring, and nothing new in sight. 2 years is a long time to have a phone. Last year’s update to the iPhone (iPhone 3GS) wasn’t enough for me to extend my AT&T contract another 2 years, or plop down $500 for an unsubsidized phone. This last apple event apple announced the iPad. There was no discussion of the iPhone, or even the operating system they share in common. This disturbed me. Concentrate on the product everyone loves, dont split your focus to another product that doesn’t solve a problem for me…

What do I want in a smart phone?

The Droid so far does _almost_ everything my jailbroken iPhone could do (and with speed and service). There of course are some gaps.

First, what do I do with my iPhone exactly? What is important to me in a smart phone that I keep with me 24/7?

- Calendar Notifications. I NEED my phone to sync with whatever calendaring system I am using (Google Calendar currently), and even more important I NEED it to notify me of events that are on that calendar. (iPhone: Stock calendar application)
- Calendar Agenda. Again, I am all about calendar support. I NEED to see what the days ahead have in store for me. (iPhone: Jailbroken LockCalendar)
- To Do List. I try to be a very organized person. I like lists. I keep extensive to do lists to organize my life. My phone needs to be able to sync with whatever solution I am using for To Do lists, even if I have to hand write it myself.(iPhone: Things)
- Note Syncing. I write notes about a lot of things that I need to remember. Same as above. (iPhone: simpleNote)
- Easy access to all of my email accounts. I get a lot of email (who doesnt) (iPhone: stock email)
- Real web browsing. I can stand stupid phone web browsers. The iPhone MobileSafari has spoiled me. I need that in a phone.(iPhone: stock browser)
- Reliable phone service. I work on an air force facility. I frequently need to make important phone calls. I need reliable phone service.(iPhone: I wish)
- Music playing. My phone is my iPod. I do not wish to carry multiple devices around.(iPhone: stock mp3 application)
- Terminal/SSH ability. I like to be able to access remote servers that I own at free will.(iPhone: Jailbroken MobileTerminal)
- Customization. I hate it when my phone looks exactly like everyone else’s. My phone is mine, it needs to feel like home. (iPhone: jailbroken WinterBoard)

So why didn’t I just get an iPhone 3GS and jailbreak it? It’s faster than the iPhone 3G, and it meshes with my current environment, BUT the current model of the iPhone 3GS can’t be jailbroken reliably. It currently requires to be tethered to a computer EVERYTIME you reboot it. Phones suck, they aren’t stable, their batteries die, they get rebooted occasionally. This is a deal breaker for me.

Week 1

Android does everything Google under the box (makes sense). To even activate your phone you have to give it a gmail address.

It automatically sucked down my Google Voice contacts, and it was a chinch to setup Google Voice on it. The market place isn’t as plentiful as the AppStore, but it does seem to have a lot of the quality applications covered.

So far I use the following to replace features of my iPhone:

- Handcent. Text messaging application at its finest. This is almost equivalent to biteSMS on a jailbroken iPhone.
- Astrid. Pretty solid to do list software supporting tags and due dates. Doesn’t quite replace Things for me, as I rely fairly heavily on the syncing capability. Astrid does seem to sync with RememberTheMilk, so I will give that a whirl.
- KeePassDroid. There’s too many passwords for me to remember. On my desktop I use KeePassX (http://keepass.info/ is free and open source for all platforms). iKeePass on the iPhone kind of sucked. KeePassDroid is pretty sweet.
- Haven’t found a note syncing solution yet.
- BetterTerminal. Pretty great terminal.

Android lets me configure every notification sound to my content. Everything can have its own noise, no hacking required.

Best part of the new phone so far? The speaker is incredibly louder than my iPhone 3G so I can actually here phone calls and text messages.

I think I will keep it for now….

UPDATE: Three weeks later, I have decided to keep the droid, and even ported my AT&T number to VZW!  Goodbye iPhone!

One of the more annoying things with having a “smart phone” is when its not uptodate with all your stuff.  A few weeks ago I wrote an AppleScript to sync my iPhone nightly at 3:00am every day.

Copy this script into the AppleScript editor, and save to a location on your harddrive.

Next step is to download and install Lingon and setup a launchd configuration to schedule your nightly iPhone sync.  Here are the settings I used:

So crunch time has hit at work again, and I am seeing 12-16 hour days for the last week.  I will resume with week 4 of P90X once work dies down again.

This post is not without some good news though, I have fallen below 250lbs!  248.8

For those curious, I finished off P90X Week 2 yesterday and started Week 3 today!  Thats 14 days in the bag!

Just finished Week 1 of P90X – and I did not miss a single day!  My weight was up and down all week, which is pretty normal, but ended today with 251,8.

A quick review of the routines in this week:

Chest & Back

This was painful.  Lots and lots of pushups and chin ups.  I have lots of room for improvement here.

Plyometrics

This is even more painful.  Think super high intensity jumping jacks.  Everything was high impact.  I was feeling pain in my legs for another 48 hours… walking around like Frankenstein!

Shoulders & Arms

Again, a ton of chin ups.  Since I am only able to do one unassisted chinup, I do these with a bar stool, with one of my feet on the lowest possible rung.  This offsets enough of my body weight, for my upper body to complete 10-18ish reps.

Yoga X

I never want to do Yoga X again.  I have never done Yoga at all before… so its pretty intense to jump right in to extreme Yoga.  I had “okay” participation with this routine, but am not nearly flexible enough to do the whole thing.  Might look into purchasing some “yoga blocks” for the next time.

Legs & Back

Lots of squats, pullups, and other crazy exercises.  My participation was okay for this as well, except for the crazy wall squats.  Normal wall squats are one thing, but alternating single leg wall squats are just INSANE! (As in, can not do it for more than 10 seconds :( )

Kenpo X

I think this was my favorite the whole week… think Karate Exercise.  Fairly high intensity, kicking, punching, blocking in various positions.  Worked up a GREAT sweet.

X Stretch

The last day of the week you have a choice:  Do X Stretch, or take a day of rest.  A day of rest, really? No thanks!  X Stretch was rather intense as well.  Basically all the warmups you did for each day of the week, but pushing yourself a little further.  For each stretch of each muscle group, you just put yourself a little more outside of your comfort/pain zone.

Well, tomorrow starts the fun all over again!

Intensely hard during this workout… it seems like the hour never ends.  Once the clock reaches 5 minutes left (cool down time!) you feel so good and proud of yourself for sticking with it.

Win for me.

It’s been no secret that I have been working my ass off for over a year to change my physical appearance, and generally how I feel about myself.  Now that I have almost reached my first goal weight of 250lbs (down from 310!) its time to kick things into over-drive: P90X.

For those unaware:

P90X or Power 90 Extreme is a home exercise system developed by Tony Horton in conjunction with Beachbody. The program emphasizes full body fitness through cardiovascular, strength training, and stretching exercises, combined with an optional nutrition and supplementation plan.

P90X stresses the importance of “muscle confusion” (commonly referred to as cross-training) by switching the order of exercises, and incorporating new exercises during each phase. Muscle confusion prevents the body from adapting to the exercises over time and plateauing which has been considered a key factor in the overall success of the program.

(Taken from the Wikipedia article)

Usually someone starting P90X posts all their stats and Day 1 pictures online.. I will spare you the eye burning pictures and stats (You already know my weight from above).

Last night I came home and started Day 1 of P90X, which is Chest & Back.  Basically a crazy crazy amount of pushups, chinups, and some weight work.  There are several types of pushups for this day, and I am only able to do a few… and very low amounts.  For the sake of working on my form, and getting reps at the same time – I am doing “modified” pushups.

Chinups?  Well, I am only capable of doing a chinup once or twice before completely destroying myself, so I am using Very-Heavy resistance bands with a door attachment to simulate doing chinups (as instructed in the videos).  I also have not purchased a new weight set yet (my set is in my LA apartment), so am also using the resistance bands for that.  (they work pretty well, but unfortunately I need more weight).

I had pretty good participation on Day 1.  Following Chest & Arms on Day 1 is Ab Ripper x. Ab Ripper x is an hour (or so) of exercises designed to work your abs.  And boy does it hurt after!

Pretty sore after Day 1… tonight is Day 2: Plyometrics.  Pretty excited to try out this session.

I doubt I will post every single day, or every single week.  I will try to post semi-often assuming that I have the willpower to continue P90X.

Google around… the results for P90x by normal people seems to be pretty fantastic.  This doesn’t seem to be one of those fads, but a very very structured home fitness program similar to having a personal trainer in a gym.

My new goal weight? 210. See you there!

There has always been 3ish stages to my jeep build:

1. Lift it
2. Get a halftop (makes it look like a truck)
3. Get huge tires

Well, now step 2 is done!

This weekend Rob helped me install a new Bestop Halftop, which includes:

1. Bikini Top
2. Deck Cover (Duster)
3. WindJammer

Took a few hours to install, but I think it looks awesome.  Took the Jeep for a test drive around Santa Monica to check for flapping, and it sounds like everything is nice and tight.

Now for those tires…